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Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a performance partnership is a risky endeavor. Larry David did it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in stature – but is also sometimes filmed placed in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, confronting Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer once played the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this film skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned Broadway lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie imagines the profoundly saddened Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with envious despair as the performance continues, loathing its insipid emotionality, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign all is well. With polished control, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the appearance of a temporary job writing new numbers for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in standard fashion hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret 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 further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie informs us of a factor seldom addressed in pictures about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at one stage, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This might become a live show – but who would create the tunes?

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