Blue Moon Review: Ethan Hawke Excels in Director Richard Linklater's Heartbreaking Broadway Parting Tale

Separating from the more prominent colleague in a showbiz partnership is a hazardous endeavor. Larry David experienced it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing tale of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in height – but is also sometimes recorded standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this film clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers 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, undependability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The film envisions the profoundly saddened Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the production unfolds, hating its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a hit when he sees one – and feels himself descending into failure.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his performance responsibility to praise Rodgers, to feign all is well. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his pride in the appearance of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in standard fashion hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the film imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her exploits with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the picture informs us of something infrequently explored in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the films: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. However at a certain point, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who will write the songs?

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