The musical is not dead after all

Rating: 10/10 (23 July 2001)

This film (and its stage predecessor) do what few musicals have been able to accomplish: make itself hip without being smarmy or oversentimental. When you think about people you know who openly express their love of 'musical theatre', these are usually not your hippest friends. Most musicals come from the same well that brought us Rosie O'Donnel's brand of entertainment (it is not wholly ironic that Ms. O'Donnel makes an appearance in the film). Most recently, Baz Luhrmann brought us "Moulin Rouge" which tries so hard to be a hip musical it decides to distance itself from its own musical aspects. The inclusion of pop songs in 1900 french backdrop comes off as an attempt to capture the earnestness of musicals with none of the responsibility that should be attendant. The effect is not so much hipness as it is questions to whole notion of why Luhrmann bothered to make a musical at all, if he could not commit to its basic aspects.
Enter this version of "Hedwig", and the hollowness of "Moulin Rouge" becomes apparent. In this film, we have great songs with smart lyrics that unfold the narrative on several levels at once. They act as exposition, foreshadowing, transitions between segments, exclamation, etc. And they, of course, rock. Compare this to the fleeting novelty of having Ewan Macgregor in period costume sing Elton John's "Your Song" to Nicole Kidman. Sure it was cute for a minute, but who could be so cynical as to assume an audience would put up with that for an entire film? Well, maybe they did put up with it, but they shouldn't have.
I only hope more people see "Hedwig" to see what a movie musical can be. My only fear is that John Cameron Mitchell and Steven Trask won't continue to produce at this level for stage and screen.