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Words are inadequate to sum up Hedwig and the Angry Inch
by Adrienne Martini
Hedwig and the Angry Inch gets complicated.
Most great books, plays, and films are next to impossible to economically sum up. Take Moby Dick. To say that it is several hundred pages about a white whale would be accurate. Amazingly reductive, but accurate.
Hedwig is several thousand feet of film about a transsexual rock 'n' roller.
But there is so much more than that. Hedwig, the aforementioned transsexual, is also the victim of a botched sex change operation (hence the "Angry Inch" part of the title) who went through the whole penis-hacking thing simply to escape from East Germany, which turns out to be an ironic kick in the pants—but that's getting ahead of the story. Hedwig and her backing band end up on a U.S. tour of casual seafood dining establishments, which purposefully are in the exact same cities where rock icon Tommy Gnosis is playing. See, Gnosis and Hedwig used to be lovers. Gnosis ended up stealing all of Hedwig's songs and....
You get the point.
What drives this wonderfully strange yet utterly plausible plot are some incredible, ass-kicking songs that serve to both tell Hedwig's story and fill it with lush, glam life. Composer/lyricist Stephen Trask's music owes significant debt to the mid and late '70s scene—especially Bowie and Reed and the Ramones and Abba—but aren't rip-offs or nostalgia trips. Trask, who also shows up in the film as Hedwig's guitar player Skszp, has synthesized the essence of that sound and magnified it, made it more immediate, modern and powerful. Add to those songs the skills of Bob Mould, Girls Against Boys, and Dar Williams, who each took a turn in Hedwig's off-camera band, and you have a album that will make your ears ring. As much as anything else, Hedwig is about the redemptive powers of rock 'n' roll.
It gets ever-more interesting—Hedwig is about the life-altering force of theater as well. This tour de force (and it's really not to soon to call it that, even though the odds of this sort of movie ever getting significant mainstream attention are virtually nil) started its life as an off-Broadway show. While writer/director/star John Cameron Mitchell has significantly fleshed out the story, the energy of the movie is as incredibly high as that of the live show. Hedwig is what theater should be—something that you can't turn away from because every fiber of your being is inexorably engaged with it, which should be pointed out to every last actor and director and producer who decides to take the stage, either locally or nationally. The audience should walk out as spent as the real live actors who, in turn, have given up all of the energy they had in telling a potent story.
Which is exactly what Mitchell does. Above all else, Hedwig is the realization of his devotion to Hedwig, of a never-ending, all-consuming desire to see this story be as great as it could be. And it shows.
Sure, there is the equally witty and snide and endearing script, which Mitchell transformed for film with the help of the Sundance Institute. And without Mitchell's fierce (and somewhat daunting) performance, you wouldn't care so much about his creation. But Mitchell's singular vision extends to the rest of the people on Hedwig's team: Arianne Phillips' inspired costumes; Mike Potter's deliciously camp make-up and wigs; animator Emily Hubley's delicate line drawings; Michael Pitt, Miriam Shor, Andrea Martin and Maurice Dean Wint's committed performances. Hell, even Killer Films (who also made Boys Don't Cry and Happiness) deserve kudos for seeing the potential this beautifully wacky story had. With Hedwig, each individual part becomes somehow greater than itself, creating a whole new world full of odd yet familiar things.
Which doesn't tell you anything at all, really.
It doesn't even begin to scratch out how funny Hedwig is, nor how rude, smart, and heartfelt. Nor does it mention the debt Hedwig owes to Plato's Symposium and Marilyn Manson and Aristotle's theatrical ideal of catharsis. The knotty depths of gender identity issues inherent in this film can't even begin to be addressed, nor can Mitchell's ability to look both boyish and girlish simultaneously and the under-rated appeal of blue eye shadow and lip gloss.
Also not before mentioned—the sound bleed-over of explosions from the next door screening of Captain Corelli's Mandolin during a resonant moment of Hedwig, and the realization that more people would rather see the same old pap rather than take a chance on something unique, a statement that would probably be agreed with by the other eight people who were at that Friday night showing.
Still, this says almost nothing about the experience of seeing Hedwig. The best I can do is this: imagine the feeling of the last few moments of Bowie's Ziggy Stardust album, as "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" becomes expansive and peaceful and accepting and loud. Hedwig and the Angry Inch is not dissimilar.
Go see this movie. It doesn't get much more simple than that.
September 13, 2001 * Vol. 11, No. 37
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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