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Parting ways from the better-known collaborator in a entertainment duo is a hazardous endeavor. Larry David experienced it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable story of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in size – but is also at times recorded positioned in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at taller characters, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this film skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protege: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous Broadway lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the show proceeds, hating its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He knows a success when he sees one – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and heads to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to arrive for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his pride in the guise of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the film conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her adventures with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture tells us about a factor rarely touched on in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Yet at one stage, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who will write the songs?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is out on 17 October in the US, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in the Australian continent.