Blue Moon Film Review: The Actor Ethan Hawke Shines in Director Richard Linklater's Bitter Showbiz Parting Tale

Parting ways from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz duo is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable tale of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also at times filmed positioned in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at taller characters, addressing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is complicated: this film effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protege: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned New York theater composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The picture imagines the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in the year 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, despising its insipid emotionality, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He knows a smash when he watches it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Before the break, Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the pub at Sardi’s where the rest of the film unfolds, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their after-party. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his ego in the form of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the picture envisions Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her adventures with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in learning of these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture tells us about something infrequently explored in pictures about the domain of theater music or the films: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Yet at one stage, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who shall compose the songs?

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