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Parting ways from the more prominent partner in a performance duo is a hazardous endeavor. Larry David experienced it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and profoundly melancholic intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in size – but is also occasionally recorded placed in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is complicated: this film skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned musical theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The movie imagines the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, loathing its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a success when he watches it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Prior to the interval, Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the pub at Sardi’s where the rest of the film takes place, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to arrive for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his performance responsibility to congratulate Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the appearance of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the film envisions Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wants Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film tells us about something infrequently explored in pictures about the domain of theater music or the movies: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This might become a live show – but who shall compose the songs?

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