🔗 Share this article

Breaking up from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz partnership is a risky business. Comedian Larry David did it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in size – but is also occasionally shot positioned in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at taller characters, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this film skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: young Yale student and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned musical theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, undependability and gloomy fits, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The movie envisions the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, hating its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a hit when he views it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Before the intermission, Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the bar at Sardi’s where the rest of the film unfolds, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to arrive for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the guise of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in traditional style hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the universe 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 confide her adventures with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the film informs us of an aspect rarely touched on in films about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at a certain point, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who will write the songs?

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