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Breaking up from the more prominent partner in a entertainment duo is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David went through it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing tale of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes recorded placed in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this movie clearly contrasts his queer identity with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protege: young Yale student and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned New York theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, hating its mild sappiness, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a smash when he views it – and senses himself falling into failure.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and heads to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to show up for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the guise of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the film envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her experiences with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie informs us of something rarely touched on in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Yet at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

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