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Separating from the more famous partner in a performance duo is a risky endeavor. Comedian Larry David did it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and deeply sorrowful intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in stature – but is also sometimes shot positioned in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at taller characters, facing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this film effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protégée: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned musical theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The picture conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the show proceeds, hating its bland sentimentality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He knows a success when he watches it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Even before the break, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the tavern at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie takes place, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to show up for their after-party. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job writing new numbers for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in traditional style attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his kids' story Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the movie imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who wants Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her experiences with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in learning of these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film tells us about a factor rarely touched on in films about the domain of theater music or the movies: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who shall compose the numbers?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London movie festival; it is out on 17 October in the United States, November 14 in the UK and on January 29 in the Australian continent.