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Parting ways from the more famous partner in a performance partnership is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable tale of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in size – but is also at times shot positioned in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The orientation of Hart is complex: this movie clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary New York theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The film imagines the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night New York audience in the year 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, loathing its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He knows a hit when he sees one – and senses himself falling into failure.

Even before the break, Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his ego in the guise of a temporary job writing new numbers for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in standard fashion hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the movie imagines Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who desires Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her experiences with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in learning of these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the film tells us about something rarely touched on in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. However at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who will write the tunes?

Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the US, 14 November in the UK and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.