🔗 Share this article

Breaking up from the more famous collaborator in a entertainment double act is a hazardous affair. Larry David went through it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and deeply sorrowful intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in stature – but is also occasionally filmed positioned in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, facing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this picture clearly contrasts his gayness with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protege: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned Broadway composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, undependability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie imagines the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere NYC crowd in the year 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, hating its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He knows a hit when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the break, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to appear for their after-party. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the appearance of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wishes Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her adventures with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in listening to these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the picture reveals to us an aspect rarely touched on in films about the world of musical theatre or the films: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Yet at one stage, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who would create the tunes?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is released on October 17 in the USA, November 14 in the Britain and on 29 January in Australia.