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Separating from the more prominent collaborator in a showbiz duo is a hazardous affair. Larry David experienced it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and deeply sorrowful intimate film from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in size – but is also at times filmed standing in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, facing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is complicated: this movie effectively triangulates his gayness with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous musical theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the deeply depressed Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with envious despair as the performance continues, despising its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a success when he views it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the break, Hart unhappily departs and heads to the bar at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the form of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the movie conceives Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who desires Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in learning of these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the movie reveals to us a factor infrequently explored in movies about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who shall compose the tunes?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is released on 17 October in the United States, the 14th of November in the Britain and on the 29th of January in Australia.