🔗 Share this article

Parting ways from the better-known partner in a performance duo is a hazardous business. Comedian Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable account of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in stature – but is also occasionally shot placed in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke achieves large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complex: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protégée: young Yale student and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary musical theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The film imagines the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the show proceeds, hating its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation point at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the break, Hart sadly slips away and heads to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to show up for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to compliment Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the film conceives Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her exploits with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in learning of these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the picture reveals to us something infrequently explored in films about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at a certain point, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who will write the numbers?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is released on October 17 in the United States, November 14 in the UK and on 29 January in Australia.