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Parting ways from the more famous colleague in a showbiz duo is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and deeply sorrowful intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing account of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in size – but is also at times recorded positioned in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at taller characters, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke achieves large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this picture clearly contrasts his queer identity with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protege: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned New York theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The movie conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night NYC crowd in the year 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the show proceeds, hating its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He understands a success when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the break, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to show up for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to praise Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the appearance of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in traditional style attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the idea for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the film conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in hearing about these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the film tells us about something infrequently explored in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at one stage, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

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