Review: HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH

An anatomically incorrect rock odyssey…

Director: John Cameron Mitchell
Writer: John Cameron Mitchell (Screenplay) and Stephen Trask (Music and Lyrics)
Cast: John Cameron Mitchell, Michael Pitt, Miriam Shore, Andrea Martin
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 89 mins
Released: 31/08/01

Plot Outline: Hedwig, born in East Berlin the year the wall was erected is the victim of a botched sex change operation. She moves to America and forms a rock band. The film follows their tour as they pursue her ex lover and protégé Tommy Gnosis, now a major star. Hedwig meanwhile pursues identity and love.

Review: Hedwig and The Angry Inch, based on an off-Broadway play is directed and written by John Cameron Mitchell who also stars in the title role. The awesome music and lyrics are supplied by Stephen Trask. Inspired by Mitchell’s own early life in West Berlin it tells the story of aspiring rock star Hedwig Robinson.

Hedwig’s story is told mainly via live performances and flashbacks. We first join her playing with her band “The Angry Inch” in a series of Bilgewaters buffet restaurants to unimpressed diners. We learn that Hedwig, living in East German was born male. As a boy Hedwig, then Hansel, spent his time listening to American forces radio and was brought up on a diet of David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. Hansel eventually meets a G.I, Luthor who falls in love with him and promises to take him to America. Luthor persuades Hansel that the best way for them to legitimately and safely leave the country is for them to marry, but this requires Hansel to undergo a sex change. As his mother puts it, to walk away you have to leave a piece of yourself behind. The sexual reorientation goes terribly wrong and Hansel is left with nothing more than an inch long stump, neither male nor female, not both but neither. Hansel, becoming Hedwig is truly androgynous.

Hedwig moves to America, but Luthor soon leaves and she ends up alone in a trailer park. She eventually meets confused Christian teenager Tommy Speck and together they write songs and fall in love, Hedwig giving him his stage name Tommy Gnosis. Tommy makes it big, leaving Hedwig behind as he quickly rises to stardom. Hedwig is alone again.

The film obviously draws comparisons with The Rocky Horror Picture Show, both glam rock musicals dealing with issues of sexuality and identity. Where Rocky tends to deal with sexuality and freedom to be who you want to be, Hedwig is love and finding out who you want to be. The film features a great mixture of songs clearly, like Hedwig influenced by Bowie, Lou and Iggy. Bowie in fact produced the L.A version of the stage musical. If someone put some Ziggy Stardust, a lot of Aladin Sane and some Diamond Dogs into one big melting pot with a dash of Rocky Horror this might be what you'd get stylistically and in its androgynous themes. The songs are catchy, anthemic, raucous and beautiful. I know sound design can be a boring topic but the sound on this film is amazing, as you would hope from a musical, but even the non-musical moments have stunning sound design.

The films philosophy is drawn from the theories of Aristophanes as brilliant and cleverly retold in the song “The Origin of Love.” Get ready for a lesson in Ancient Greek literature and philosophy. Here we go; Plato’s Symposium tells the tale of a group of philosophers discussing love through a series of speeches. The fictional version of Aristophanes describes how;

“the sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two.”

Not only this but humans were biologically very different for example;

“primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces.”

Now the humans became too powerful and made a challenge on the gods, as punishment the gods decided to reduce the strength of the humans by cutting them in half.

“They shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.”

So the three sexes are split right down the middle, forming what we now know as humans. These humans are desperate to find their other half, to complete themselves.

“After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they were on the point of dying from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them,--being the sections of entire men or women,--and clung to that. They were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity of them invented a new plan: he turned the parts of generation round to the front, for this had not been always their position, and they sowed the seed no longer as hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another; and after the transposition the male generated in the female in order that by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race might continue”

Aristophanes sums up by saying:

“Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half.”

The film follows Hedwig’s quest to discover the identity she hides beneath the various wigs and to complete herself, to find her other half that was torn from her by the gods. Tommy Gnosis and Hedwig in some respects then are the two halves of the same whole. In the stage version the two roles are played by the same actor. Like Plato’s Symposium, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and of course Rocky Horror to muse on the meaning and nature and love requires exploration of human nature and to some extent gender.

Hey but lets not get bogged down with the subtext. The film is bright, colourful, loud and fast paced, whizzing along, the story is told in 89 fantastic minutes. The live band scenes have a documentary feel to them, Mitchell singing the vocals live on set rather than miming to a pre-recorded track. The flashbacks have an eastern European cinema look with a bleak blue hue. The film blends elements of stage musical, rock shows and art-house cinema. Together with director of photography Frank DeMarco, the cinematography is beautiful. They have a Wes Anderson feel for the aesthetic, shots framed like paintings, a perfect example being Tommy gazing into a mirror to admire his new Gnosis look, as Hedwig holds it and their two halves become one.

The film has its dark moments and is often moving and frequently witty. Mitchell deserves high praise for his performance as Hedwig. His portrayal as this tragic character carrying herself with a strained and fragile dignity is superb.

The film is not without its flaws. The supporting characters with the exception perhaps of Gnosis are essentially one-dimensional. The majority of the band don’t even have speaking roles, they barely have names. The importance of band member/partner Yitzhak is confusing and only very slightly hinted at unless you watch the deleted scenes on the DVD. This lack of supporting characters is not that surprising though when you consider the stage version is little more than a one man show.

I think - and I may be reading far too much into this - that the film has nods to other rock musicals, some maybe even subconsciously. One of the best songs in the film is “Wig in a Box” sung as the side of Hedwigs trailer comes down forming a stage. The windows form pits for the band members to stand in, which reminded me of the house the Beatles sheared in Help! At the end of this song the camera pans up to a pylon, complete with spotlight beams before cutting to a close up of a pool in a shopping mall, very reminiscent of the RKO scene in Rocky Horror. Oh and I’m sure this is just my warped mind, but when Hedwig is outside a warehouse towards the end of the film, it very much looks like the club that the cross dressing Gene Symons plays in, in Never Too Young To Die.

The films ambiguous ending allows the viewer to ponder the issues raised in this fun and uplifting musical. If you like David Bowie, Glam Rock and campy musicals, especially Rocky Horror then this is for you. It is glossy and trashy in a good way. A rocking romp that under the surface deals with some very deep concepts.