Blue Moon Critique: The Actor Ethan Hawke Shines in Director Richard Linklater's Heartbreaking Showbiz Parting Tale

Separating from the more famous colleague in a showbiz duo is a risky business. Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in height – but is also sometimes shot placed in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The orientation of Hart is multifaceted: this picture effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary New York theater composing duo with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The picture conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, gazing with envious despair as the show proceeds, loathing its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation point at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He understands a hit when he sees one – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the intermission, Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to feign all is well. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the movie envisions Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the universe can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who wants Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her exploits with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in listening to these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film tells us about something seldom addressed in films about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who will write the numbers?

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