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Parting ways from the better-known collaborator in a performance double act is a dangerous business. Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable tale of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in height – but is also at times recorded standing in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture clearly contrasts his gayness with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned musical theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The picture conceives the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, looking on with envious despair as the performance continues, loathing its insipid emotionality, abhorring the exclamation point at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a smash when he views it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Even before the intermission, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to arrive for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to praise Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the picture envisions Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her experiences with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in listening to these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film informs us of a factor seldom addressed in movies about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who will write the songs?

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