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Parting ways from the better-known collaborator in a entertainment duo is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David did it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in stature – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at heightened personas, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is complicated: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: young Yale student and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned musical theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The movie envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in the year 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the show proceeds, hating its bland sentimentality, hating the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Even before the break, Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie occurs, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his ego in the appearance of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the picture conceives Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted 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 disclose her adventures with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in listening to these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture tells us about an aspect rarely touched on in movies about the world of musical theatre or the films: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Yet at one stage, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who shall compose the tunes?

Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is out on October 17 in the US, the 14th of November in the UK and on 29 January in the Australian continent.