HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH
Written, Directed By, and Starring John Cameron Mitchell
Playing at Academy of Music
Making an off-Broadway rock musical into a movie is treading on dangerous ground. Recent movie musicals (“Evita,” “Moulin Rouge”) haven’t exactly proved successful or even good. And shows billed as “rock musicals,” like RENT, Tommy or Jesus Christ Superstar may be musicals, but they don’t rock.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch not only succeeds as a movie – it rocks.
John Cameron Mitchell, writer, director and title star of the film, translated his stage show to the screen with grace. What was once basically a one-man show, has taken on the extra characters and scenery necessary for a film, and hasn’t changed all that dramatically in the transition. It is still Hedwig’s show. And the biting humor and surprising poignancy remains.
In flashback sequences narrated by Hedwig, she tells the story of her life. Once named Hansel, she grew up as a boy in Communist East Berlin, or the “other side” of the Berlin Wall. The story that follows is full of such splits. Like Germany, Hedwig is split in halves between man and woman. And as we come to find out later, she has been separated from the love of her life, her other half.
An American GI sees Hansel sunbathing, and leaves the youngster a trail of candy that leads down a path of seduction. But, in order to get married to the GI and escape Communist Berlin, Hansel must be a woman. So, a botched sex change operation is performed, leaving the newly monikered Hedwig not as a man, and not quite a woman, but with her “angry inch.”
The film’s scenes are just as cramped as the trashy, tacky seafood restaurants that the talented Angry Inch is reduced to touring, and the tiny hotel rooms that all of the band members squeeze into for sleep. They are touring nationally, following teen Goth rock sensation Tommy Gnosis, who was once the awkward teen geek Tommy Speck. In more flashbacks, Hedwig meets him and falls in love with him. She transforms him from a Jesus freak with little knowledge of music into a dark rocker with real talent.
Tommy achieves stardom by playing Hedwig’s songs, and leaves her in the shadows. She is reduced to claiming her fame in tabloids, and having a marginal cult following of a few geeky youths.
Jaded contemporary audiences seem to distrust the merit of traditional musicals. The musical aspect works here because, while still doing a superb job narrating her life, Hedwig doesn’t bust out in song just anywhere. She’s a performer. A glam, David Bowie-like rock star who sings on stage. Or rather, sings next to the salad bar. But she certainly isn’t skipping along Austrian hills filling them with the sound of music.
Hedwig is a tough movie. It doesn’t shy away from honesty. It balances its love story perfectly between the humor and the music. It’s not sappy and it’s not sentimental. Hedwig’s faith in love, bruised though it is, keeps her going. The story of love, told to her as a youngster by her mother, is recounted in the song “The Origin of Love.” Taken from a speech in Plato’s “Symposium,” and combined with other world mythologies, this tale accounts for all love, indiscriminate of gender.
The movie doesn’t end in a neatly wrapped love story. The connection between Hedwig and her other half is damaged, but it can never be severed. And when love is diminished, it is the music that remains.
