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Breaking up from the more prominent colleague in a entertainment duo is a risky affair. Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in height – but is also occasionally shot placed in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, facing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous Broadway composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture imagines the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the performance continues, hating its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He knows a smash when he views it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to praise Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With polished control, Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the movie imagines Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who wants Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her exploits with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the picture informs us of an aspect rarely touched on in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the films: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. However at a certain point, Hart is boldly cognizant 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 tunes?

Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is available on 17 October in the US, 14 November in the UK and on 29 January in the land down under.