Out Hedwigs the Angry Inch as theCitizen Kane of rock movies

Rating: 9/10 (22 January 2010)

The Citizen Kane of rock & roll movies, almost literally - even the framing sequence evokes Kane, with a present-day reporter charged with the task of rediscovering the rise and fall of a long-gone Ziggy Stardust-type rocker. Christian Bale is the closeted reporter, seen in the present as living in an almost monochromatic world, while his 8-track flashbacks to the tri-sexual '70s are painted on a palette of liquid LSD.
The story was originally intended as a sort of Bowie bio-pic, but ended up a mix of urban legends cut from tales of Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain, Bryan Ferry, Mick Jagger, Lou Reed, Jim Dandy, David Johansen, and others. The soundtrack mixes classic glam tracks by Lou Reed with new songs done for the film, performed by various super groups with members of Placebo, the New York Dolls, and others.
"Follow the brooch" to trace the reincarnated spirit of Oscar Wilde, the world's first pop star, through the movie - (SPOILERS ALERT)
First, Jack Fairy finds Wilde's brooch as a boy, seeming to be guided by Wilde's own tendency toward bawdy bacchanalia and pop creativity. Fledgling rocker Brian Slade steals the brooch from Fairy during a love tryst, and thus takes Fairy's place in the pop culture zeitgeist.
Slade gives the brooch to Curt Wild and subsequently finds his own star falling, as Curt takes on the task of epitomizing a modern day Wilde. However, Curt implodes (much like his historical antecedent), and ends up giving the brooch to - who else? - the Writer, Arthur Stuart, in search of what really happened to the glittery-glam world he once thought his generation had (re)created.
Wilde's life rather than his work seems to be the story template. Curt only becomes (briefly) articulate and dandy-fied after he gets the brooch, and in fact is wearing it at the staged press conference where he and Brian Slade essentially dance a gay minuet, dressed as French royalty and announcing their personal and professional pairing - with a public kiss, no less, Curt now living out Oscar Wilde's unrestrained and in-discrete libido alongside Slade.
When a similar sort of public brou-ha-ha landed the real Wilde in prison, that all but broke him for the rest of his life, the same way fading punk-star Curt Wild seems to lose all inspiration and muse, withdrawing from bravado to whimper to "whatever happened to....."
I like to think Arthur Stuart ends up with the story of his career after the movie wraps, and that he eventually becomes a well-known and respected writer.
If he ends up far more celebrated in death than in life, well, then he will have lived out Wilde's own final chapters --- Arthur was probably buried wearing that effin brooch ---
Maybe it's not the REAL story of '70s glam rock, but it represents that scene better than any ten eps of VH1's "I Love the '70s" ---- I've played the entire soundtrack album at least once a month since I saw this flick on its first video release ----