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Parting ways from the better-known collaborator in a entertainment partnership is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable story of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in stature – but is also occasionally filmed standing in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at heightened personas, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned New York theater composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The film envisions the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, loathing its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He knows a smash when he views it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Before the intermission, Hart unhappily departs and heads to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie takes place, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their after-party. He knows it is his performance responsibility to congratulate Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his ego in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in traditional style hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his children’s book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the movie imagines Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her adventures with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie informs us of something infrequently explored in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who will write the songs?

Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is available on 17 October in the USA, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in the land down under.