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Parting ways from the better-known colleague in a entertainment double act is a dangerous affair. Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and profoundly melancholic intimate film from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in stature – but is also at times filmed placed in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this film skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous musical theater composing duo with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, undependability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The film envisions the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the production unfolds, hating its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he views it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the bar at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie occurs, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to appear for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the appearance of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in traditional style listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the notion for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the movie imagines Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos 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 chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in learning of these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture reveals to us a factor seldom addressed in pictures about the domain of theater music or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. However at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who will write the tunes?

The film Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is out on the 17th of October in the USA, the 14th of November in the UK and on the 29th of January in the land down under.