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Parting ways from the more prominent colleague in a entertainment duo is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in size – but is also occasionally shot standing in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the straight persona 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 dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned musical theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the performance continues, loathing its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a hit when he sees one – and feels himself descending into failure.

Prior to the interval, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign all is well. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the appearance of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in traditional style hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the movie imagines Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her exploits with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the picture tells us about something seldom addressed in films about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who shall compose the tunes?

Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is available on 17 October in the US, 14 November in the UK and on 29 January in Australia.