Hedwig and the Angry Inch
John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” is one of the boldest musicals I’ve ever watched. When I first saw Mitchell’s film adaptation in 2001, it didn’t really connect with me. That said, when my friend Mathew recommended the film for my “Movie a Week” series for this year, I was definitely curious to see whether 11 years would change my initial thoughts on the film.
For those who don’t know, the film is based on the stage musical by Mitchell and Trask about a glam rocker from East Germany. Born Hansel to an American GI and German mother, the young man (played by Mitchell) falls in love with an American soldier named Luther. The two get married, but not before a botched sex-change operation leaves Hansel, who now goes by the name Hedwig, with only an inch of flesh where his penis was, and where he never had a vagina. Now, she is on tour with her band, the Angry Inch, travelling the country, and telling her story through song as she follows her ex-boyfriend (and former band mate) Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt), who has gone onto bigger and better things, but not before taking Hedwig’s music for his own.
To call this film a “comedy,” as some have, is a bit misleading. Yes, there are moments that are wickedly funny, but film strikes me more as a tragedy actually. Like most tragedies, there is a love story at its center. In this film’s case, it is a triangle between Hedwig (who is confident in her own skin on the outside, but inside is hurting, unsure of her place, and filled with rage at the world), Tommy (who has wanted nothing to do with her since learning of her transsexual nature), and Yitzhak (Miriam Shor), the Angry Inch’s lead guitarist, who is very much in love with Hedwig, but has his own anger as a result of her painful obsession with Tommy. There’s only sadness for all three, even when it looks like Hedwig and Tommy appear to reconnect, but that ends in tragedy for them both as well…until Hedwig is able to find his own voice again.
I think a big part of the reason the film, which has a great, emotionally-charged soundtrack (written by Trask and Mitchell), didn’t really work for me when I first saw it was the subject matter, which was unlike anything I had seen before. Even though I was a full-blown cineaste at the time, the idea of a film centered around gay and transgender people and issues was very new to my own experiences. In 2012, that is no longer the case, as the past decade has brought such issues to the forefront in the ongoing “culture wars.” That, along with the expanding of my circle of friends over the years, has really broadened my own thinking, helping me appreciate the film (which, in fact, felt more universal in its message this time around) a great deal more than I did the first time around. I don’t think I’d consider it a “great movie” in any respect (despite some great visual flourishes, it still feels very “stagey” in the way Mitchell, making his first feature, presents it), but it definitely resonated with me a lot more this time around.
