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Parting ways from the more famous colleague in a showbiz duo is a dangerous business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also occasionally shot placed in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The orientation of Hart is multifaceted: this picture effectively triangulates his gayness with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned New York theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture imagines the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, loathing its mild sappiness, abhorring the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He knows a hit when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the interval, Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie occurs, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to show up for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the appearance of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the idea for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the film envisions Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the world wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her experiences with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in learning of these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the picture reveals to us a factor seldom addressed in movies about the domain of theater music or the movies: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who shall compose the songs?

The film Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is available on 17 October in the United States, November 14 in the UK and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.