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Separating from the more famous colleague in a entertainment duo is a hazardous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in stature – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is complicated: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: young Yale student and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned Broadway composing duo with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The picture conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, observing 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 extremely potent it is. He realizes a success when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the intermission, Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie occurs, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With polished control, Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the form of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the idea for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her experiences with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in hearing about these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie tells us about an aspect seldom addressed in films about the domain of theater music or the movies: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who will write the numbers?

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