🔗 Share this article

Parting ways from the more famous collaborator in a entertainment double act is a risky endeavor. Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart just after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in size – but is also occasionally filmed standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this picture clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary New York theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The film imagines the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the performance continues, hating its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a hit when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Prior to the break, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to praise Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his pride in the guise of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the picture imagines Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her experiences with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in learning of these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the film informs us of something seldom addressed in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. However at one stage, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who would create the songs?

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