🔗 Share this article

Separating from the more prominent partner in a showbiz partnership is a dangerous business. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in size – but is also at times shot placed in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is complicated: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous musical theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The movie imagines the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with envious despair as the performance continues, despising its mild sappiness, abhorring the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a success when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the pub at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the guise of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in conventional manner hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the world couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her exploits with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in learning of these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the film tells us about a factor infrequently explored in movies about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who will write the numbers?

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