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Breaking up from the more prominent colleague in a showbiz double act is a risky endeavor. Comedian Larry David went through it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and profoundly melancholic intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable story of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in height – but is also occasionally recorded placed in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at taller characters, facing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful musical he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous Broadway composing duo with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The film conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the performance continues, hating its insipid emotionality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the interval, Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to praise Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With polished control, Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the guise of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the film imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in listening to these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture informs us of a factor infrequently explored in movies about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who will write the songs?

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