Blue Moon Film Review: Ethan Hawke's Performance Excels in Director Richard Linklater's Bitter Broadway Parting Tale

Separating from the more famous colleague in a entertainment partnership is a dangerous affair. Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable tale of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also occasionally recorded standing in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, addressing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this film clearly contrasts his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous Broadway lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The film conceives the deeply depressed Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in the year 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, despising its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a success when he sees one – and senses himself falling into failure.

Before the intermission, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the pub at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their after-party. He knows it is his performance responsibility to praise Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his pride in the appearance of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the film imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in hearing about these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the movie reveals to us a factor rarely touched on in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who shall compose the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is available on October 17 in the United States, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in the land down under.