🔗 Share this article

Breaking up from the more famous partner in a performance duo is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David experienced it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable story of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in size – but is also occasionally recorded positioned in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, facing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture effectively triangulates his gayness with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned New York theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The movie envisions the deeply depressed Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the show proceeds, hating its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a smash when he views it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the pub at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their after-party. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With polished control, Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the form of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the concept for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the universe can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wants Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her adventures with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in listening to these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about an aspect infrequently explored in movies about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This might become a live show – but who shall compose the songs?

Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is released 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.