HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH
Directed by John Cameron Mitchell
(Fine Line)
Inevitably, Hedwig and the Angry Inch—the film adaptation of writer/director/star John Cameron Mitchell's long-running off-Broadway musical—will be compared to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. After all, they've both got transvestites and glam rock/show tune hybrids in them, right? Don't be fooled, though—those are the only things the two films have in common. While Rocky Horror is merely an over-the-top ode to camp excess, Hedwig has a story to tell. It's a quirky tale, to be sure, and like all the best glam rock it obfuscates its messages with flash and a thick layer of makeup. But there's a beating heart to this film that belies its outer glitz. This is a film about power struggles—in relationships, in gender definition, in rock 'n' roll. There's plenty of sly humor, but camp is thankfully absent. This film deals with serious issues while staying tunefully entertaining—it's quite simply the best rock musical ever made.

Mitchell plays Hedwig, an East Berlin-born rock 'n' roll singer leading a "pan-Slavic" band the Angry Inch. Hedwig's got problems. Born male, a botched sex-change operation at the behest of an infatuated American G.I. has left the poor soul in a permanent state of flux. Neither man nor woman, at least biologically, Hedwig has only a small lump of flesh—the "angry inch" of the title—in place of true genitals. (It's implied that Hedwig would have been perfectly happy as a gay man, submitting to the sex change only because someone who supposedly loved her wished it.) Worse, her former lover/collaborator Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt) stole all her songs and used them to gain rock stardom. Now Hedwig, her band (which includes her current paramour, the bearded but androgynous Yitzhak (Miriam Shor)), and her manager Phyllis (character actress Andrea Martin) are touring the U.S. in Tommy's wake. Playing a chain of family seafood restaurants called Bilgewater's, Hedwig tells the befuddled patrons her life story while performing the same songs Tommy is playing in the arenas down the street. She's also suing Tommy for credit on those songs, which is her excuse for stalking him. On the way to a final confrontation with Tommy, the hard-drinking Hedwig will have married and divorced the G.I., played a women's music festival to an adoring crowd of one, trashed at least one Bilgewater's franchise, whored in the back allies of New York and tested the patience of everyone around her.

While on the surface it seems like a glitter rock version of a Jacqueline Susann novel, underneath the sordid story of show business rise and fall (or, in Hedwig's case, crawl and tumble) is a desperate search for love and wholeness. Hedwig wants to find her other half, her soulmate, the person she believes will complete her. Is it Tommy? Yitzhak? Herself? This quest is memorably depicted in the epic ballad "The Origin of Love," which uses performance clips and deceptively simplistic cartoons to lay out not only Hedwig's quest but her philosophy. Her pursuit of love is also a search for her own identity. She has to face her own confused sexuality before she believes herself worthy of true love, a task made all the more difficult by her experiences with lovers who couldn't accept her for what she was. It's a heartbreaking struggle for Hedwig, made more so by the almost complete lack of melodrama in its presentation. The absence of soap opera dynamics makes Hedwig's constant failures all the more crushing.

With numerous performance pieces (the heart of the stage show), flashbacks, dream sequences and animated segments, not to mention a story told by a classic unreliable narrator, this film could have been a mess. But Mitchell has a laser-beam focus on his character and a concise understanding of how his themes are intertwined. For a story that seems like it would truck in excess, there's an amazing amount of subtlety—emotions and plot points are conveyed with a seemingly throwaway scene or bitchy one-liner when they could have been blown up into large scale set pieces. Every actor involved gives career-high point performances, particularly Mitchell, and no one leaves teethmarks on any scenery. At no point does the film feel like it leaves the rails.

Perhaps the most important element of the film's coherence is the music, which is perfectly integrated into the story. These aren't fluffy numbers dropped in at random moments, as with most musicals, but carefully placed narrative links that often convey the emotional undercurrent more honestly than Hedwig's voice-overs. Composer Stephen Trask, a rock musician by trade rather than a Broadway professional, did a bravura job on the tunes—they're poignant, witty and catchy, capturing both the immediacy of rock and the sophistication of Tin Pan Alley. "The Origin of Love," "Midnight Radio" and "Wig in a Box" not only boast singalong choruses and dramatic progressions but also move the narrative briskly along. "Wicked Little Town" (performed by both Hedwig and Tommy at different points) is a lovely ballad that lays bear the hearts of the characters, and "Tear Me Down" and "The Angry Inch" are simply fucking good rock songs. Mitchell and especially Trask should come out of this experience with the attention their musical talents deserve.

The film asks Hedwig (and, by implication, the audience) some hard questions. Is Hedwig male or female? Does her lack of specific gender truly matter? Is she angry at Tommy for stealing her work or for rejecting her when he discovered her, um, equipment? (There's a powerful scene in which Tommy, having declared his love for his songwriting partner, pulls his hand out of her pants in confusion. "What is that?" he asks. Hedwig's simple reply: "It's what I've got to work with.") Is her sense of identity impeding her quest or is it the other way around? Is Hedwig's mother correct in her assessment that absolute power corrupts absolutely? How is that kind of power used in relationships? Not only does the movie have the intelligence to ask such things, but it has the balls to answer them—with an ending that may or may not be a dream, no less. Hedwig and the Angry Inch is well-crafted, challenging, exciting and, above all, genuinely moving. It's a one-of-a-kind experience not to be missed. This is what should be meant by the phrase "rock opera." Michael Toland