Breaking up from the more prominent colleague in a showbiz partnership is a risky endeavor. Comedian Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and deeply sorrowful intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in height – but is also occasionally shot standing in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.
Layered Persona and Themes
Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the excessively cheerful musical he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complex: this picture clearly contrasts his queer identity with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.
As part of the renowned New York theater songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, undependability and gloomy fits, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.
Emotional Depth
The movie imagines the deeply depressed Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, gazing with envious despair as the production unfolds, despising its insipid emotionality, detesting the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He understands a success when he watches it – and feels himself descending into defeat.
Prior to the intermission, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to arrive for their after-party. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the form of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.
- Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in standard fashion attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
- The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his kids' story Stuart Little
- The actress Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the picture envisions Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love
Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.
Standout Roles
Hawke shows that Hart partly takes spectator's delight in listening to these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about an aspect infrequently explored in movies about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who will write the numbers?
The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is available on October 17 in the USA, November 14 in the Britain and on 29 January in the land down under.
