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Separating from the more prominent collaborator in a performance duo is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David went through it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in size – but is also occasionally recorded standing in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this movie clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned New York theater songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The film imagines the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in the year 1943, gazing with envious despair as the production unfolds, hating its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie takes place, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his pride in the appearance of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the movie conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Certainly the world can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her exploits with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie reveals to us a factor infrequently explored in pictures about the domain of theater music or the films: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Yet at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who would create the numbers?

Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is available on 17 October in the United States, the 14th of November in the UK and on 29 January in the land down under.