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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 3, 2001)
32 J— » M * ’ august 3, 2001 mm m m WàMÈ FILM .......... ▼........... V " i ^ u n a a u s a re ( j i r i s ’ n igh t S ta r tin g ■r Au ‘ ' ~ < li i 4\ ■'* \ ' Sex-change nock and sleazy shock 14-12 SE M orrison in young man named ohn Cam eron Tommy. She trans M itchell’s Hed- forms him from an wig and the acoustic-strumming Angry Inch is a hick into a bona fide pretty, smart little star via the teachings movie with some real of rock’s literate, sex flashes of brilliance. ually oblique Holy This came as some Trinity: Lou Reed, what of a surprise to Iggy Pop and Bowie. this writer, who was Tommy leaves underwhelm ed after Hedwig in the dust, witnessing the stage assumes the pseudo version late in its off- nym she invented for Broadway run a cou him (“Tommy G no ple of years ago. C er sis”), waters her musi tainly, it was raunchy cal ideas down to and funny enough to bland acceptability he entertaining, but it and repackages him seemed bland, con self as a faux-morose trived and undeserved balladeer and main ly self-impressed. stream Rolling Stone The musical was cover boy. constructed as a con Now, Hedwig and cert by underground a ragtag band of rock rock singer Hedwig, ’n ’ roll vagabonds with most of the limp angrily across story’s events and Hedwig has a good reason for being angry the United States, transitions conveyed trailing Tommy’s sta through patter and dium tour and playing stilted shifts in light mall eateries in an ing and props. It was a attempt to cash in on case of too much sus her tacky tabloid fame pension of skepticism as the skeleton in his in return for too little. closet. Much screen Much to the detriment time is devoted to of the experience, the Hedwig’s songs, music itself sounded which, with the fre like half-baked sub- quent aid of some Meatloaf sludge, with coolly childlike ani only the slightest hint mated sequences, of its much-ballyhooed retell Plato’s myth post-punk “rawness” about the origin of and “attitude.” love: Human beings T hank heavens, fall in love because, then, that writer, direc by C hristopher M c Q uain before the gods cruel tor and star Mitchell ly divided us into decided to reinvent the story for a motion picture version. This stuff individuals, we all physically were joined with our perfect other half. The songs serve as emo deserved a second chance, as it provides a rare "T” entry into the GLBT film subgenre. tional subtext, revealing Hedwig’s own obses sion with becoming whole, an odyssey that’s Opened up for celluloid, Hedwig's revolt against strangely, magically fulfilled at the film’s end. conventional social, sexual and political wis dom is refreshingly defiant. Mitchell ameliorates most of the play’s Here is the convoluted story, as related in weaknesses simply by using the language of cin ema to rescue the story from its stage-bound alternately deadpan and bittersweet voice-over flashback: A German boy is migrated by his claustrophobia and by placing the starring role back into his own capable hands after dubious mother to communist East Berlin, where she interpretations by Donovan Leitch and Ally teaches sculpture to amputees. Little Hansel keeps himself busy listening to American Sheedy. Stephen Trask’s music is still more Forces Radio with his head in the oven, the generic than it should be, preferring to refer only real space of his own in their government- ence rock’s theatrical power rather than actual issue apartment. The strange amalgam of trou ly tap in for itself, but watching Hedwig’s auto biography play out in the film’s various surreal badours— including Anne Murray (“a Canadi an working in the American idiom”) and locales is always engaging and frequently David Bowie (“an idiom working in America enchanting. and Canada”)— leaves a lasting impression on Despite a minuscule budget of $6 million, his fragile young mind. Mitchell and cinematographer Frank Demarco Hash-forward: A U.S. soldier comes upon a lend virtually every shot the visual acuity that, barely post-adolescent Hansel sunbathing nude because it costs nothing but imagination, hy the Berlin Wall and seduces him. They fall always has been the secret weapon of good in love, and with the complicity of Hansel’s independent film. The sunbathing sequence mother, the G.I. coerces him into undergoing a alone— in overexposed color, Golden Arches sex-change operation. peeking over the west side of the Berlin Wall This failed surgery is what transforms as the soldier woos Hansel with contraband Hansel into Hedwig, with only the titular American Gummy Bears, so unlike the flavor "angry inch” for genitalia. She arrives at her less German ones— is worth seeing Hedwig for, soldier’s Kansas C ity trailer home just in and there are plenty more that nearly equal its time for him to run off with a young male humor, pathos and inventiveness. lover as she watches the Berlin Wall crum Hedwig bears more than a passing resem ble on television. blance to that other queer rock musical, 1998’s Embracing the absurdity of her situation, Velvet Goldmine, especially in its sense of aes Hedwig baby-sits, turns tricks and starts a go- thetic morality and artistic integrity. (It’s no nowhere rock band with some Korean Army coincidence that both were overseen by that wives. 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