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

Breaking up from the better-known collaborator in a performance double act is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David did it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in stature – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at taller characters, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is complex: this movie clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary New York theater composing duo with composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, undependability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night New York audience in 1943, looking on with envious despair as the performance continues, hating its bland sentimentality, hating the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Even before the break, Hart sadly slips away and heads to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to appear for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to praise Richard Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his pride in the form of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in traditional style hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the notion for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the film imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her adventures with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in listening to these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor seldom addressed in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. However at a certain point, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who shall compose the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London movie festival; it is released on 17 October in the USA, 14 November in the Britain and on January 29 in the Australian continent.