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Parting ways from the more prominent collaborator in a entertainment duo is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David did it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and profoundly melancholic intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing tale of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in size – but is also at times filmed standing in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer once played the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complex: this film skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: college student at Yale and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous musical theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The picture imagines the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the show proceeds, despising its bland sentimentality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Before the interval, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the tavern at Sardi’s where the rest of the film takes place, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to show up for their after-party. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her adventures with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie informs us of an aspect rarely touched on in films about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Yet at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will survive. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who will write the songs?

Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is released on October 17 in the United States, November 14 in the UK and on January 29 in the land down under.