Blue Moon Movie Critique: Ethan Hawke Excels in Richard Linklater's Bitter Broadway Breakup Drama

Parting ways from the more prominent colleague in a performance partnership is a risky business. Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in size – but is also at times shot placed in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this film effectively triangulates his gayness with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his protege: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie envisions the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, observing with envious despair as the production unfolds, hating its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a success when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Before the break, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the bar at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to arrive for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the form of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in standard fashion hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his children’s book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the world can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes spectator's delight in learning of these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us a factor seldom addressed in movies about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. However at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who would create the tunes?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is released on 17 October in the USA, 14 November in the UK and on January 29 in the Australian continent.