🔗 Share this article Blue Moon Review: Ethan Hawke's Performance Excels in Richard Linklater's Poignant Broadway Breakup Drama Breaking up from the better-known colleague in a entertainment double act is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable story of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in height – but is also sometimes recorded standing in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at taller characters, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec. Complex Character and Motifs Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley. As a component of the renowned New York theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes. Psychological Complexity The picture imagines the deeply depressed Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with envious despair as the production unfolds, despising its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a success when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat. Even before the intermission, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his ego in the appearance of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse. Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the notion for his children’s book Stuart Little Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the picture envisions Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her experiences with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation. Acting Excellence Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in learning of these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film tells us about something rarely touched on in movies about the world of musical theatre or the films: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Yet at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who shall compose the numbers? The film Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is out on the 17th of October in the US, 14 November in the Britain and on the 29th of January in Australia.