Blue Moon Review: Ethan Hawke Shines in Director Richard Linklater's Bitter Showbiz Split Story

Parting ways from the more famous partner in a showbiz double act is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable story of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in height – but is also occasionally recorded placed in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film effectively triangulates his gayness with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protege: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned Broadway songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, 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 annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, hating its insipid emotionality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and goes to the pub at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie occurs, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to appear for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to feign all is well. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the guise of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the film imagines Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the world wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wants Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in listening to these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film informs us of an aspect seldom addressed in movies about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. However at one stage, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is released on 17 October in the US, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in the land down under.