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Separating from the more prominent colleague in a showbiz duo is a hazardous business. Larry David went through it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable account of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also at times recorded placed in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at taller characters, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke achieves large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this movie effectively triangulates his gayness with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous Broadway composing duo with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the performance continues, hating its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation point at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Before the intermission, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their after-party. He knows it is his showbiz duty to praise Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the guise of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in traditional style hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the idea for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the movie imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wants Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in listening to these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture tells us about something infrequently explored in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who would create the songs?

Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is out on the 17th of October in the United States, November 14 in the Britain and on 29 January in the land down under.