Blue Moon Analysis: Ethan Hawke's Performance Delivers in Director Richard Linklater's Poignant Showbiz Breakup Drama

Separating from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz partnership is a hazardous affair. Comedian Larry David experienced it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in stature – but is also at times shot positioned in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, facing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona 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 just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned musical theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The picture conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, despising its insipid emotionality, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He understands a smash when he watches it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Even before the intermission, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to arrive for their after-party. He realizes it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his pride in the guise of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the picture conceives Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her experiences with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in learning of these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie informs us of an aspect seldom addressed in films about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who will write the tunes?

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