🔗 Share this article

Breaking up from the more prominent partner in a showbiz double act is a hazardous business. Larry David went through it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in stature – but is also sometimes recorded placed in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at heightened personas, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complex: this picture clearly contrasts his queer identity with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protege: young Yale student and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned New York theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere Manhattan spectators in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the performance continues, hating its mild sappiness, abhorring the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the tavern at Sardi’s where the rest of the film takes place, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their after-party. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his pride in the form of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the movie conceives Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wants Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in learning of these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the picture reveals to us an aspect rarely touched on in films about the domain of theater music or the films: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. However at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who shall compose the songs?

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