🔗 Share this article

Separating from the more famous collaborator in a performance duo is a dangerous business. Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in stature – but is also occasionally recorded placed in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at heightened personas, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary New York theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, undependability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the production unfolds, despising its mild sappiness, abhorring the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a success when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the intermission, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the pub at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to show up for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the guise of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the movie conceives Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her adventures with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in listening to these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture reveals to us something seldom addressed in pictures about the domain of theater music or the movies: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who would create the tunes?

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