Blue Moon Analysis: Ethan Hawke's Performance Shines in Director Richard Linklater's Bitter Broadway Breakup Drama

Parting ways from the better-known partner in a performance duo is a risky business. Larry David went through it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful intimate film from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes shot placed in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this movie clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned Broadway lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture envisions the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with envious despair as the production unfolds, despising its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He knows a success when he sees one – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the intermission, Hart unhappily departs and heads to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their after-party. He realizes it is his performance responsibility to praise Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the appearance of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the movie conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her experiences with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in hearing about these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture tells us about a factor rarely touched on in movies about the world of musical theatre or the films: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who would create the numbers?

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