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Breaking up from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz duo is a dangerous business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing tale of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in size – but is also at times recorded placed in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at taller characters, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned New York theater composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, undependability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The film imagines the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, despising its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He knows a hit when he watches it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Even before the intermission, Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film occurs, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their after-party. He knows it is his performance responsibility to compliment Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the form of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in traditional style hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the movie envisions Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her experiences with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the film tells us about something seldom addressed in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. However at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who shall compose the songs?

Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is out on the 17th of October in the USA, the 14th of November in the Britain and on 29 January in the land down under.