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Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a entertainment duo is a hazardous endeavor. Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable tale of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in height – but is also at times filmed standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, facing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is complicated: this movie effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned Broadway composing duo with composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night New York audience in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, hating its insipid emotionality, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a success when he watches it – and senses himself falling into failure.

Before the break, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to praise Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his ego in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in listening to these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the film tells us about an aspect seldom addressed in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the films: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. However at some level, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who would create the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is available on October 17 in the US, 14 November in the Britain and on January 29 in the land down under.