HEDWIG: It is clear that I must find my other half. But is it a he or she? What does this person look like? Identical to me? Or somehow complementary? Does my other half have what I don't? Did he get the looks? The luck? The love? Were we really separated forcibly or did he just run off with the good stuff?
Hello everyone! I'm back slightly late this week with the movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch. In honor of Pride Month, I'll be blogging about LGBTQ+ movies in the next four weeks. I'm quite pleased with my selection of movies for this month, and I hope you'll like it as well! Now, let's talk about this week’s movie as I’m too excited about it!
Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a rock musical written by John Cameron Mitchell and composed by Stephen Trask. The movie tells the story of a transsexual rock singer (Hedwig) who tours the U.S. with her band and follows her former lover who stole her songs. The storytelling in this movie was unlike anything I've ever seen in a musical before. Hedwig's story was told in an equally fun, satiric, yet tragic way. We could easily follow Hedwig's storyline along with the songs and could warm up to the character even in the first minutes of the film.
I also found the political message underlying the movie very meaningful. As Hedwig was born in East Berlin where the characteristics of two genders were separated strictly, we see her struggling with her sense of identity. Just like with the genders, the wall in Berlin is a symbol that is often used to show the contrast between communism to capitalism and freedom to captivity - and the movie was set in such political atmosphere. Now, let's talk more about the characters and what they represent in the film.
Let's start with Hedwig, my favorite character in this film. Hedwig is a gender-fluid pop-rock singer who travels the country while sharing her story. After the film's success, she became a symbol for a generation of queer people to express themselves freely and not to care about labels - as John Cameron Mitchell hated the labels. In an interview, Mitchell says:" The film corroborated my feeling that gender and desire were more fluid than everyone else was making it seem." It's a very beautiful saying, and I think he demonstrated that successfully in his film. As Hedwig flies to the U.S. to pursue freedom, we also see her in a search of a transcendental bond with a person, and that person could be she or he, it doesn't matter to her. Finding one's soulmate is the dominant theme of this film, and it was handled in such a way that it makes the audience disregard the gender roles in a relationship. While some people found this interpretation of transsexualism "wrong" or "missing", I found it meaningful. I respect people's opinions though, so I encourage you to read this review to gain a different perspective on the film.
Let's move forward to, oh well, Tommy. This is the character that most viewers are (rightfully) angry at. Tommy is Hedwig's second lover and the one that left her when he heard about her transsexualism. I found this character quite complex because even though he still loves Hedwig he still can't break his limited point of view - and that leads him to abruptly end the relationship. At the end of the film, we see the lovers longingly gaze at each other but never become whole again. Ending up together or not, I found the soulmate bond between these characters very beautiful. In the making of this bond, I read that Mitchell was inspired by Plato's Symposium, in which Aristophanes gives a speech about love being a need to reunite with one's other half after being split into two. We see this story told beautifully with the song Origin of Love, which I highly recommend!
Slowly reaching the end of this post, I should highlight the fact that this film was shot on such a limited budget, yet it managed to exceed the limits and gave the viewer an amazing experience. I give this movie a big full 10 out of 10, and it is definitely a movie that I'll keep returning to in the next years.
Thank you so much for reading this far, and you're always encouraged to leave a comment below about what you think. You're also invited to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr, all with the same nickname moviesatdawn. You can also email me your suggestions as I welcome them with open arms: moviesatdawn@gmail.com! Thank you again and I'll see you next week!
HEDWIG: How did some slip of a girly boy from communist East Berlin become the internationally ignored song stylist barely standing before you?
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