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Separating from the more famous collaborator in a entertainment duo is a risky endeavor. Larry David did it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing tale of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in stature – but is also sometimes filmed placed in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at taller characters, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complex: this picture clearly contrasts his gayness with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous musical theater lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture imagines the deeply depressed Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the production unfolds, hating its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the pub at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie takes place, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to show up for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his performance responsibility to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With polished control, Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in traditional style hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the idea for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the film imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her adventures with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in hearing about these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture informs us of a factor infrequently explored in pictures about the domain of theater music or the films: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This might become a live show – but who would create the tunes?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is released on 17 October in the US, the 14th of November in the UK and on January 29 in the land down under.