Blue Moon Critique: The Actor Ethan Hawke Shines in Director Richard Linklater's Poignant Broadway Parting Tale

Separating from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz double act is a risky affair. Larry David experienced it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable account of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in height – but is also at times recorded positioned in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at taller characters, confronting Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Hart is multifaceted: this film skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned New York theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the performance continues, loathing its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation point at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a success when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their after-party. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to compliment Rodgers, to feign all is well. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in traditional style hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the idea for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her experiences with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in hearing about these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us a factor infrequently explored in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the films: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Yet at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who would create the numbers?

Blue Moon premiered at the London movie festival; it is out on 17 October in the United States, November 14 in the UK and on January 29 in the land down under.