Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Directed by John Cameron Mitchell
Raised a boy in East Berlin, Hedwig undergoes a personal transformation in order to emigrate to the U.S., where she reinvents herself as an 'internationally ignored' but divinely talented rock diva, inhabiting a 'beautiful gender of one'.
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What critics compared Hedwig and the Angry Inch to
( The Rocky Horror Picture Show is an obvious influence.)
Ultimately, the movie is what you expect it to be -- a colorful, high-energy rock show which will remind a lot of people of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
This is a tale of the few ups and many downs of a conflicted rock star, kind of like Pink Floyd's "The Wall" (made into a movie by Alan Parker), with some of the campiness and sexual flamboyance of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", and when the Angry Inch are playing on the 9th stage of a Lilith Fair-style festival or at a buffet restaurant in front of bemused senior citizens, you can't help but think of "This is Spinal Tap!".
John Cameron Mitchell's off-Broadway camp smash "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" translates to the screen in a way that recalls "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (the audience is even invited to sing along at one point, and transsexuality is an ongoing theme), except with better acting and more depth.
I own both the original stage recording and the movie soundtrack, and the music works beautifully on its own, like the songs in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (by the way, just because both films have stage origins, rock music and a guy in drag doesn�t mean we need to compare Hedwig with Rocky Horror at every opportunity; aside from those superficial likenesses, and the fact that Hedwig the live show has spawned �Hed-Heads� at least as enthusiastic as the Rocky Horror fans, the movies couldn�t be more different in terms of story and tone).
A cross between "Velvet Goldmine" and " The Rocky Horror Picture Show ", "Hedwig" is simultaneously brash and crude, mythical, and touching as it parallels the division of Eastern Europe with the tribulations of its be-wigged protagonist and her search for identity.
Mitchell, the gender-bending genius behind the hit stage play "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," which he adapted into the 2001 film, has set up a disappointingly low bar with his latest outing, in which he seeks to push the envelope in depicting sexual frankness.
This is probably intended to say something about society's penchant for voyerism, although if director John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) is trying to make a more specific point, he doesn't achieve it.
Director John Cameron Mitchell ("Hedwig and The Angry Inch") flaunts cinematic tradition with a raucous sex comedy filled with truly shocking sex acts that underscore his vision of New York as a playground of debauchery.
The latest film from writer/director John Cameron Mitchell (who made the terrific movie musical "Hedwig and the Angry Inch") is attracting more than its share of curiosity because of Mitchell's decision to center his film on the subject of sex and to have his actors actually copulate, in various gymnastic configurations, on camera.
All hail, then, to writer-director John Cameron Mitchell, who wrote and starred in the off-Broadway musical hit Hedwig and the Angry Inch, for pretending the last 30 years didn't make hard-core romance obsolete.
It's as if Mitchell -- the thoughtful, mischievous faun behind "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," one of the only truly swinging rock musicals ever made -- were calling out to one and all, "Come on over, kids -- we're having a sex party!"
(See also: “The Origin of Love,” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch .)
With its slightly nerdy, play-on-wordy title, “The Half of It” alludes to the ancient Greek belief that two-faced humans were separated by the gods, devoting their lives to finding their lost soulmates (if you like the idea, read Plato’s “Symposium,” or check out “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”).
Like many teen movies, “The Half of It” begins with an animated illustration of the origins of love from Plato’s Symposium, much like that other queer cinema classic, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”
Shortbus: John Cameron, the maker of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, has crafted a pan-sexual romp designed to make that other fever dream of a film look downright tame.
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As Kuze, Michael Carmen Pitt gives a truly haunted performance that grabs back at some of his early promise in films like Hedwig and the Angry Inch and The Dreamers.
A riveting prologue provides some fun teases of the craziness to come: The action begins at a Nepalese monastery as a guy named Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen, glammed up with so much glittery eye makeup that he could just as easily be playing the lead in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”) teleports into the ancient library, rips a page out of a magic book, and walks through a portal that opens onto downtown London.
Michael Pitt (Hedwig And The Angry Inch, Boardwalk Empire) stars as Ian Gray, a molecular biologist obsessed with finding the missing links in the evolution of the eye, as part of a personal mission to debunk God.
Director of photography Chung-Hoon Chung, a frequent Park collaborator, and production designer Therese DePrez, whose credits range from "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" to "High Fidelity," do extraordinary work on "Stoker."
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American cinema about gay men has generally fallen into several fairly hardened categories: personal struggle (Moonlight and Brokeback Mountain), the devastation of the AIDS crisis (Philadelphia, Angels in America), the battle for rights (The Normal Heart and Milk, which ends with real-life pioneer Harvey Milk’s assassination), over-the-top extravaganza (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything!
In fact, the last time I can remember feeling the surge of electric joy that hit me about 3 minutes into Scott Pilgrim was when I first saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch on opening night.