🔗 Share this article

Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a entertainment partnership is a risky endeavor. Larry David did it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in height – but is also at times recorded placed in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this film clearly contrasts his queer identity with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned Broadway composing duo with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The movie envisions the profoundly saddened Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the show proceeds, hating its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He knows a success when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the guise of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the picture conceives Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the world can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her experiences with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in hearing about these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor infrequently explored in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This might become a live show – but who shall compose the tunes?

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