🔗 Share this article

Parting ways from the more famous partner in a entertainment partnership is a dangerous business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and profoundly melancholic intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable story of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also occasionally filmed standing in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complex: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his protege: young Yale student and budding theater artist Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned Broadway composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers broke with him and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The picture imagines the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the production unfolds, despising its insipid emotionality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film occurs, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to appear for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the appearance of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the concept for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the movie imagines Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the universe can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wants Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her adventures with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in hearing about these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor seldom addressed in films about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. However at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will survive. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a live show – but who shall compose the tunes?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is available on 17 October in the US, 14 November in the Britain and on 29 January in Australia.