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Separating from the more prominent partner in a showbiz partnership is a hazardous affair. Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and deeply sorrowful intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in stature – but is also at times recorded positioned in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complex: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: young Yale student and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary New York theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, gazing with envious despair as the performance continues, hating its bland sentimentality, hating the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into failure.

Prior to the break, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to show up for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his ego in the guise of a temporary job writing new numbers for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Qualley plays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the movie conceives Hart to be complexly and self-destructively 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 Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wants Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her adventures with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart partly takes spectator's delight in learning of these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film reveals to us an aspect infrequently explored in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who would create the songs?

Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is released on the 17th of October in the US, 14 November in the Britain and on 29 January in the land down under.