HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001)
Okay so there are like three things on my list of criteria for a good movie:
1. A good aesthetic
2. A good soundtrack
3. I literally cannot get it off my mind/stop talking about it/tweeting about it/basically shoving it down everyone’s throat
Enter: Hedwig.
Now, full disclosure - I had *heard* of this musical before, mostly thanks to the then-star of the Broadway installment, Darren Criss - but I knew absolutely nothing about it when my prof screened it in a Women in Film lecture last spring. So, I would personally say that between the Glee star’s presence alongside Neil Patrick Harris’ performance before his, that this isn’t exactly an unknown queer story.
Though the music initially got my attention, the performance by John Cameron Mitchell really carried the storyline for me. As we begin to learn about Hedwig’s difficult past as a (presumably) queer teen who has been forced by circumstance to marry a soldier to escape Berlin and undergo a sex reassignment surgery, we are introduced to the complicated nature of their identity (which, c’mon - who can’t relate to not knowing who they are?).
Although at the time Hedwig is not opposed to presenting as a woman, we understand that the permanence of the surgery was not something that they necessarily needed for this presentation. As the Berlin wall comes crashing down later on, Hedwig’s surgery, we learn, seems to be an unfortunate mistake (their “angry inch”).
Of course, because I’m hesitant to dish out spoilers I’m being very cautious about plot points here - but basically, this film....THIS. FILM. Has one of the most brilliant endings ever. Like, it is in my top five, gives me chills to think about, perfect endings.
The entirety of the film is about ideas of wholeness, of what queer love looks like, and who and what gender is for. I think that’s part of why I love it so much, because in one sense it’s a story about falling in love with yourself. Of course there are peripheral stories of love, and an absolutely GORGEOUS song called “Origin of Love” - which, by the way, includes queer couples in its lyrics - uses the image above as well as other cartoons to depict a ‘coming together’ to represent (what one can read as) soulmates.
This imagery plays out in several ways throughout the film - through Hedwig and their husband Yitzhak’s separation, or Hedwig’s tattoo - to again make suggestions about what it means to be complete. And (a bit of a spoiler here), the film’s end brilliantly employs the face to make a statement about gender fluidity, and how gender throughout the story was something put upon Hedwig’s body rather than felt by them.
Upon reading a bit more about the Broadway musical I was interested to learn (this info is from a simple Wikipedia search) that Hedwig’s husband Yitzhak was meant to be a drag star but Hedwig forced them to quit, and that the passing on of the wig at the story’s close then takes on an entirely new meaning. Likewise, this extra bit of the story brings a new perspective to Hedwig’s own relationship to gender, since the wig becomes an even more symbolic representation of presentation. That is, since Hedwig steals the wig to present as a woman from someone who actually desires to present as a woman, it reflects how each character is read by society, read by each other, and also shows how Hedwig feels angered by what all of these things mean.
Yitzhak is played by a woman both on screen and stage, which again adds to the queerness of the production. I definitely wish that they had kept in the relationship to drag in the film, but I still think that Yitzhak was very interesting and had a very troubled relationship with Hedwig - largely due to the fact that (spoiler again!) they cannot be fully present in the relationship when they are placing expectations of wholeness on others instead of theirself.
SO, with all of this in mind...GO WATCH IT! In the process of writing this I actually spammed my partner with texts begging him to watch with me, just to relive the epic feeling this film leaves me with.
