Blue Moon Movie Review: Ethan Hawke's Performance Delivers in Richard Linklater's Poignant Broadway Parting Tale

Parting ways from the more famous colleague in a entertainment duo is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David went through it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable account of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in stature – but is also at times filmed standing in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Hart is complicated: this film effectively triangulates his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protege: young Yale student and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned musical theater composing duo with musician Richard 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 the lyricist's addiction, undependability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture envisions the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the show proceeds, loathing its bland sentimentality, detesting the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a smash when he views it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Before the break, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and heads to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to arrive for their after-party. He knows it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his pride in the guise of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the film conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her adventures with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in hearing about these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the film tells us about an aspect infrequently explored in films about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. However at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who would create the tunes?

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