🔗 Share this article

Separating from the more famous partner in a performance partnership is a hazardous endeavor. Comedian Larry David went through it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in size – but is also at times filmed placed in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, facing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protégée: young Yale student and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned musical theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the performance continues, hating its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He understands a success when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the intermission, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie takes place, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to arrive for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his performance responsibility to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his pride in the form of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the movie imagines Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Certainly the universe couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who desires Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her adventures with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the picture informs us of something seldom addressed in pictures about the domain of theater music or the films: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who shall compose the songs?

The film Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is released on the 17th of October in the US, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in the Australian continent.