🔗 Share this article

Parting ways from the better-known collaborator in a entertainment double act is a hazardous affair. Comedian Larry David did it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes shot standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complex: this picture clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protégée: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous New York theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, undependability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie envisions the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the performance continues, loathing its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a hit when he sees one – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to show up for their after-party. He knows it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his ego in the guise of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in traditional style hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the film conceives Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wants Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in hearing about these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the film tells us about something infrequently explored in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who would create the songs?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is released on 17 October in the USA, the 14th of November in the Britain and on 29 January in the land down under.