Blue Moon Film Analysis: Ethan Hawke's Performance Shines in Director Richard Linklater's Heartbreaking Broadway Split Story

Parting ways from the more famous colleague in a entertainment partnership is a risky endeavor. Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable tale of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in size – but is also at times shot standing in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful musical he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protégée: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary New York theater songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film imagines the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with envious despair as the show proceeds, hating its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the break, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the tavern at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie occurs, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to show up for their after-party. He knows it is his performance responsibility to praise Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the form of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in learning of these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture informs us of an aspect rarely touched on in films about the world of musical theatre or the films: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Yet at some level, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who would create the songs?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is out on October 17 in the USA, the 14th of November in the UK and on January 29 in Australia.