hedwig and the angry inch

Director: john cameron mitchell

Actor: john cameron mitchell,miriam shor,stephen trask,theodore liscinski

Data Published: Fri Jul 27 2001

Genres: Comedy,Drama,Music,Musical

Key Words: teenage boy,drag,handjob,band,rock band

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0248845/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedwig_and_the_Angry_Inch_(film)

Description: Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a movie starring John Cameron Mitchell, Miriam Shor, and Stephen Trask. A gender-queer punk-rock singer from East Berlin tours the U.S. with her band as she tells her life story and follows the former...

Plot: Hansel Schmidt is an East German "slip of a girly boy" who loves rock music, and is stuck in East Berlin until he meets Sergeant Luther Robinson, an American soldier. Luther proposes marriage to Hansel, this plan will allow Hansel to leave communist East Germany for the capitalist West. However, in order to be married, the couple must consist of a man and a woman and according to Luther, there will be "a full physical examination." Hansel's mother, Hedwig, gives her child her name and passport and finds a doctor to perform a sex change. The operation is botched, however, leaving Hansel – now Hedwig – with a dysfunctional one-inch mound of flesh between her legs, the eponymous "Angry Inch". Hedwig goes to live in Junction City, Kansas as Luther's wife. On their first wedding anniversary, Luther leaves Hedwig for a man. That same day, it is announced that the Berlin Wall has fallen and East Germans are flooding freely into the West, meaning as material gains go, Hedwig's sacrifices have been for nothing. Hedwig recovers from the separation by picking up some "odd jobs" and returning to her "first love" of music by forming a rock band composed of Korean-born Army wives. Babysitting for "the commander of the nearby fort," she befriends Tommy Speck — a shy and misunderstood teenager questioning his Christian upbringing. For six months, she teaches him "rock history, lyrics, grooming, and vocal training" taking him from playing the occasional guitar masses to the two of them "out-grossing monster trucks in Wichita." Hedwig gives him the stage name "Tommy Gnosis" (stating that Gnosis is the Greek word for "knowledge") for his graduation. Feeling her "inch," Tommy leaves her and goes on to become a wildly successful rock star by stealing the songs Hedwig wrote alone and with him during the time they collaborated. The "internationally ignored" Hedwig and her band, the Angry Inch (now composed of Eastern Europeans including her husband, Yitzhak), are forced to support themselves by playing in a chain of failing seafood restaurants called Bilgewater's and other small venues. Hedwig is following Tommy's tour while pursuing a copyright lawsuit. In between songs, she reflects on her life story through flashbacks and stories told directly to either disinterested restaurant patrons or her small, but loyal group of fans. Throughout the film, Hedwig refers to Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium. This myth, retold by Hedwig in the song "The Origin of Love", explains that human beings were once round, two-faced, four-armed, and four-legged beings. Angry gods split these early humans in two, leaving the separated people with a lifelong yearning for their other half. Near the end of the film, Hedwig is down and out, her band and her manager having abandoned her in disgust after she tears up Yitzhak's passport. While working as a streetwalker, she finally reunites with Tommy and they reconcile. After the two of them accidentally drive Tommy's limo into a News truck, paparazzi burst onto the scene, Hedwig becomes famous and Gnosis' popularity tanks. Reunited with her band, Hedwig performs at Times Square Bilgewater's culminating in a violent removal of her drag. Entering the final chapter of the film, it seems to take place in a non-real space, perhaps Hedwig's mind. Now in male form, Hedwig discovers herself alone in front of Tommy on a huge stage. He sings to her, pleading forgiveness and saying goodbye; she realizes that she created her "other half" from within herself. Hedwig then finds herself back at Times Square Bilgewater's, but the space seems transformed, with ambient white lighting. The band members, dressed all in white, are already in their places on stage. Hedwig gives Yitzhak her blonde wig and sings a song of triumph and solidarity with "all the misfits and losers" of the world. A brief animated sequence symbolizing the union of the separated Platonic halves leads to the final shot: Hedwig walking naked down a dark alley and into the street.