Blue Moon Movie Analysis: The Actor Ethan Hawke Shines in Director Richard Linklater's Bitter Broadway Parting Tale

Breaking up from the better-known colleague in a entertainment duo is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing tale of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in height – but is also at times recorded placed in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at taller characters, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary musical theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, undependability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The film imagines the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, loathing its mild sappiness, abhorring the exclamation point at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He knows a hit when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Before the interval, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to arrive for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the appearance of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Qualley plays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the film imagines Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wants Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her adventures with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in hearing about these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the film reveals to us an aspect rarely touched on in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who shall compose the tunes?

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