Blue Moon Movie Review: The Actor Ethan Hawke Delivers in Director Richard Linklater's Bitter Broadway Parting Tale

Breaking up from the better-known partner in a entertainment double act is a dangerous business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and deeply sorrowful intimate film from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing account of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in stature – but is also occasionally recorded placed in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this movie clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary musical theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The movie envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the performance continues, loathing its insipid emotionality, hating the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He knows a smash when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Before the break, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and goes to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his ego in the form of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in learning of these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us something infrequently explored in movies about the domain of theater music or the movies: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at a certain point, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who will write the songs?

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