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Breaking up from the more prominent colleague in a showbiz double act is a risky affair. Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, facing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful musical he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Hart is complicated: this movie clearly contrasts his queer identity with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by actress 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, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie conceives the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere NYC crowd in the year 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, despising its mild sappiness, hating the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He knows a success when he sees one – and senses himself falling into failure.

Before the interval, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie occurs, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his ego in the form of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in traditional style hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the universe can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her exploits with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us a factor rarely touched on in films about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the tunes?

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