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Separating from the more famous colleague in a entertainment duo is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David went through it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable story of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in height – but is also occasionally shot standing in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at taller characters, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful musical he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protégée: college student at Yale and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned Broadway composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The film conceives the deeply depressed Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, gazing with envious despair as the production unfolds, despising its insipid emotionality, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He knows a hit when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Prior to the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture occurs, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to appear for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to praise Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his pride in the guise of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their ongoing performance 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 bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the film envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the world wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in learning of these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie tells us about an aspect rarely touched on in movies about the domain of theater music or the films: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Yet at one stage, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who would create the songs?

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