Breaking up from the better-known colleague in a performance partnership is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing story of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in height – but is also sometimes shot standing in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.
Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this movie effectively triangulates his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.
As a component of the famous Broadway composing duo with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.
The movie envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in the year 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, hating its mild sappiness, abhorring the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.
Even before the break, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to arrive for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.
Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her exploits with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.
Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in hearing about these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie tells us about something rarely touched on in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This might become a live show – but who will write the songs?
The movie Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is available on October 17 in the USA, the 14th of November in the UK and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.
