Hedwig is the brainchild of Actor/Director John Cameron Mitchell and composer Stephen Trask, who both starred in the original off-Broadway version. The movie follows the life of Hansel, a boy born to an East German woman and an American G.I in 1961 Berlin, the year the Wall went up. Hansel and his mother live in East Berlin during his formative years, time Hansel spends playing in the oven and dreaming of finding his "other half", a person he decides early on is not on the Communist side of the wall. He dreams of getting over the wall, which is a physical as well as metaphorical barrier. Soon he meets Luther, an American Officer, who he proclaims his "sugar daddy", a term that is both literal and figurative, as Hansel is initially lured by the promise of sweets.
A botched sex-change operation and faux-marraige later, and Hansel, now Hedwig, finds him/herself in the United States. All of this is told through a series of flashbacks as Hedwig and the Angry Inch tour the country, ostensibly playing family restaurants, but in actuality stalking Tommy Gnosis, a rock star who Hedwig met and nurtured years earlier, and who stole Hedwig's songs to become famous.
The plot of the movie can be summed up best by Hedwig himself, who at one point rhetorically asks the crowd gathered at a local Bilgewater's restaurant, "How, you ask, did a slip of girly boy from Communist East Berlin wind up the Internationally ignored song-stylist barely standing before you?" The journey that Hedwig takes is inspiring and funny and everything that makes a movie great. If you're feeling down about the state of movies, have had enough of the Fast and the Freaking Furious, then Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the movie for you. Enjoy!
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