Parting ways from the more prominent partner in a showbiz double act is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David did it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in stature – but is also occasionally shot standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, facing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.
Multifaceted Role and Motifs
Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The orientation of Hart is multifaceted: this movie clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.
Being a member of the legendary musical theater 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 song Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.
Emotional Depth
The film conceives the deeply depressed Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, looking on with envious despair as the performance continues, loathing its mild sappiness, abhorring the exclamation point at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into failure.
Before the interval, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the pub at Sardi’s where the rest of the film occurs, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the form of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.
- The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in standard fashion attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
- The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
- Margaret Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the picture conceives Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection
Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Surely the world wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her experiences with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.
Standout Roles
Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in hearing about these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the film reveals to us an aspect infrequently explored in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Yet at a certain point, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who would create the tunes?
Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is out on the 17th of October in the US, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on the 29th of January in Australia.
