Blue Moon Movie Analysis: Ethan Hawke Excels in Richard Linklater's Heartbreaking Showbiz Parting Tale

Parting ways from the better-known collaborator in a performance partnership is a dangerous affair. Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in size – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at taller characters, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this picture clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary musical theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, loathing its bland sentimentality, hating the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he views it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the break, Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the pub at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his ego in the form of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in traditional style hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• Qualley plays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the picture conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wants Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her exploits with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the movie tells us about something seldom addressed in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the films: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who shall compose the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is available on October 17 in the USA, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in Australia.