Blue Moon Critique: The Actor Ethan Hawke Delivers in Richard Linklater's Heartbreaking Broadway Split Story

Breaking up from the better-known partner in a performance duo is a risky business. Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in stature – but is also sometimes shot standing in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke achieves large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complex: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary Broadway lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie imagines the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the performance continues, despising its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He understands a smash when he views it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to appear for their after-party. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his pride in the guise of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the idea for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the picture conceives Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wants Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her experiences with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie informs us of an aspect seldom addressed in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who shall compose the numbers?

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