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Breaking up from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz partnership is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, facing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The orientation of Hart is complicated: this film clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protege: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary musical theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with envious despair as the production unfolds, despising its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a success when he watches it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Before the break, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to appear for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the guise of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the picture envisions Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the world can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her experiences with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in hearing about these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie reveals to us an aspect rarely touched on in movies about the domain of theater music or the films: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who will write the numbers?

The film 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.