A couple of months ago, when I was unemployed and therefore bored out of my tiny mind, I became pretty obsessed with the show RuPaul’s Drag Race. I discovered that the whole 6 seasons so far were on UK Netflix, and of course that meant I ended up spending a couple of weeks fanatically devouring the whole lot (there’s a point to this anecdote, I promise). One of my particular favourites was Season 5 winner Jinkx Monsoon, and whilst I was browsing performances on Youtube I came across this video of Jinkx performing a song called ‘Wig in a Box’. I instantly fell in love with the song, and after doing some digging around managed to get my hands on a copy of its original setting, John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s 2001 movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch (there’s that point!). Since watching Hedwig that first time it has very quickly become one of my favourite films, not to mention my favourite soundtrack to boot. Hopefully this post will be an interesting read for my fellow Hed-Heads, and will maybe encourage the uninitiated to check it out. It’s worth it, I promise…

The film tells the story of Hedwig Schmidt, an East-German glam-rock singer who marries an American soldier, undergoes botched gender reassignment surgery and emigrates to Kansas, where she is promptly left by her husband and forms her titular band, The Angry Inch. She then becomes the lover and musical mentor to Tommy Gnosis, and after he steals her songs and abandons her follows his stadium tour around the USA in a search for closure, telling her story at a series of poorly-attended gigs in grotty chain restaurants. I’m probably not doing complete justice to the framing device, but it works brilliantly and allows for lots of non-linear, free-association storytelling. This is reflected in the constantly changing filming style, which varies its filters and angles- even bringing in animated scenes- to evoke the different stages of Hedwig’s life, from Communist East Berlin to a Junction City trailer park to Times Square. The naturalistic often blends into the surreal, too, creating a dreamlike tone that I love and that ties into the film’s themes of liminality and finding metaphysical meaning.

As something of a bildungsroman story, the entire movie revolves around the central figure of Hedwig. John Cameron Mitchell puts in a nuanced tour-de-force of a performance. He perfectly conveys a person who, despite her brash and spiky façade, is in fact deeply vulnerable, hurt and unsure, and does it with a great balance of subtlety and theatrical aplomb. The ‘Origin of Love’ sequence is a particular highlight for this. Part of the character’s genius is also in the writing. Hedwig is deeply flawed; prone to outbursts of anger and emotionally abusive towards her husband/backing-singer Yitzhak (that relationship is one I would have actually liked to know more about to round out the film a little more). Vitally, though, she is essentially relatable and you can always sense the fear behind the rage. This aspect of the character is also balanced out with generous streaks of deadpan, often pitch-black or absurd comedy, which chimes with my own sense of humour and is probably one of the many reasons I love this movie so much. Hedwig’s complexity and dualities form the basis of the film’s tone: balanced with the heavy doses of camp and surreality is a strong, authentic emotional centre.

I’m aware that this post has turned out to be more of an adoring ode than a true analytical review, and that there are lots of elements I haven’t covered. To be honest (and trust me, with my degree in analysing and criticising everything I read or watch it’s always very hard for me to say this about anything) I find very little ‘wrong’ with Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and, as with a lot of things I adore, find it hard to look at from a totally objective perspective. I love the music, the uplifting yet bittersweet ending, the fin-de-siecle glam-rock aesthetic, and the theme of realising your own importance and wholeness even when the world seems to be crumbling before your eyes. Hedwig is required viewing- not just for the ways it can reflect upon the evolution of gender acceptance and sexual politics in the 14 years since it was made, but in the ways it holds up a mirror to the human condition.

PS- I just found a fantastic blog post about gender and identity in the film here. Check it out if you want a bit more of a thorough/analytical perspective on those themes! 🙂