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august 3, 2001
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FILM
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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. She also finds a lover and protégé in a
prescient producer of intelligent
Hedwig is a trails triumph;
The Meat Rack is a trashy,
campy relic
r \
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