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Parting ways from the more prominent collaborator in a entertainment partnership is a risky business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable tale of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in stature – but is also at times filmed standing in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, facing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is complicated: this film clearly contrasts his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his protégée: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous Broadway songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The film imagines the deeply depressed Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night New York audience in the year 1943, observing with covetous misery as the performance continues, loathing its mild sappiness, hating the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He knows a hit when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Before the interval, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to show up for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his performance responsibility to praise Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the guise of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in standard fashion attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the film imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the world couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her experiences with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about something infrequently explored in films about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who shall compose the songs?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is released on 17 October in the US, 14 November in the UK and on January 29 in Australia.