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Separating from the better-known colleague in a entertainment partnership is a dangerous affair. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in stature – but is also occasionally shot positioned in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at heightened personas, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary musical theater songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was accountable for 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, Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The movie conceives the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, observing with envious despair as the show proceeds, hating its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation point at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He knows a success when he watches it – and senses himself falling into failure.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the pub at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie takes place, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to show up for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to compliment Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the picture conceives Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wishes Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her experiences with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in learning of these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the film reveals to us a factor seldom addressed in films about the world of musical theatre or the films: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. However at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the songs?

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