🔗 Share this article

Separating from the more prominent collaborator in a entertainment double act is a risky affair. Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in size – but is also occasionally filmed positioned in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes 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 bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is complex: this film clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: young Yale student and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary New York theater lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie imagines the deeply depressed Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with envious despair as the production unfolds, hating its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a success when he sees one – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Before the break, Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to praise Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his ego in the guise of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the movie imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who desires Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the film tells us about something seldom addressed in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at a certain point, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who will write the tunes?

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