Blue Moon Movie Analysis: The Actor Ethan Hawke Excels in Director Richard Linklater's Heartbreaking Broadway Parting Tale

Parting ways from the more prominent partner in a performance double act is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David did it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in stature – but is also at times recorded standing in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at taller characters, facing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this film skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the show proceeds, despising its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Even before the intermission, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and heads to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the form of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the film envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her exploits with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in listening to these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie informs us of an aspect rarely touched on in movies about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. However at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who will write the songs?

Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is out on 17 October in the United States, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in the Australian continent.