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Parting ways from the more prominent colleague in a entertainment double act is a risky business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable tale of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in height – but is also sometimes recorded placed in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned musical theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night NYC crowd in the year 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, loathing its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a success when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Prior to the intermission, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and heads to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to arrive for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the appearance of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the film envisions Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in learning of these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the movie tells us about an aspect rarely touched on in movies about the world of musical theatre or the films: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. However at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who will write the tunes?

Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is out on October 17 in the USA, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on the 29th of January in the land down under.