Simply fantastic

Rating: 9/10 (19 August 2002)

Saw this movie sometime ago and immediately bought both the soundtrack (all the better to play in the car) as well as the DVD. Nether have left their respective player components since.
As has been described ad nauseum here - this is the story of a girly slip of a boy's journey from communist eastern block Berlin to Kansas City and notoriety as he enters into a law suit for the shared credits and reciepts to the songs that are generating fame and fortune for the countries most famous rock and roll icon who refuses to aknowledge him.
We start the movie with Hedwig bursting angrily onto stage delivering the raw, powerful song "Enemies and adversaries" Every torch singer joke is pulled thrown at the audience and its easy at this point to write Hedwig off as simply another painted man on stage, with the novel twist that this one can actually sing his own songs .. but very little more depth is presented - much as one might write off any transexual or stripper on stage.
But behind the heavy make up brash lyrics and pat one liners the movie begins to slowly flesh out the man behind the make-up. We are shown snippets of Hedwigs journey to the States from his life in the Eastern block, his childhood, his mother . I liked this technique - First we are presented the finished product - a man in makeup screaming out anger on a tired stage - not the kinda person too many of the audience would relate to. As soon as your ready to write all this off we are shown Hedwig as a boy - Hansel - in Eastern block Berlin - we are shown snippits of his life and allowed to develop the character into a real person - we are then let into the real motive behind the man in an amazing song "The origin of love" .
From this point in the movie onwards the story is told both in Songs and snippets flashing back to the past as well as current day - metaphor is used heavily but not confusingly - every image presented works to provide a richer context for the reason behind why Hedwig is the way he is. We end up with a portrayal of a person most people wouldn't have a hard time recognising in themselves - even if the exterior presentation is packaged somewhat differently.
This is one of my favorite movies of all time - a classic that I predict will gain in popularity as time marches on. 9/10.