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Rating: 3 out of 5
I have no idea what it means to be a transgender person. I am not going to sit here and give some explanation about that topic. I will say that I respect them as a person, and anyone on this planet should be happy to live the way they want to live. Nothing wrong with getting to know a person no matter who they are. You can always learn something from a person and make the world a better place.
Recently, I watched the Danish Girl, and I have mixed feelings about the film. The story is nice, and the acting was good, but I was overall not impressed by the whole movie. Everything about this film is nicely made, and when I finished it, it just didn’t hit me as hard as other films. I was indifferent to the whole movie and just moved on. That is sad because it is a good movie.
Directed by Tom Hooper and based on the 2000 novel of the same name by David Ebershoff, the film is loosely inspired by Danish painters Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener’s lives. During the early parts of the 1920s in Copenhagen, Einar Wegener (Redmayne) and his wife Gerda (Vikander) are happily married. Einar is the more renowned painter as his wife Gerda is still trying to make it by preferring to paint landscapes and she portraits. While trying to find inspiration for one of her paintings, she has Einar pose for a portrait while wearing a dress. This one instance changes their world forever, triggering a subtle transformation inside Einar. At first, they play with the idea by shopping for wigs and shoes. Einar even dresses up and attends as a woman named Lili. What starts off playful soon makes Einar realize that she is, in fact, a woman and, over time, prefers being Lili. As Lili begins her transformation, she and Gerda first try to “cure” her, but this leads to doctors wanting to lock her up as a pervert and/or lunatic. Lili’s voyage of self-discovery will ultimately lead to her undergoing one of the first-ever sex-change operation.
It is always fascinating to see a person’s journey. You never really know what they go through until you walk a mile in their shoes. I will say that in the beginning, I was completely confused about this film. At first, I thought Gerda was completely cool with the whole thing. One night after she gets positive feedback about her painting, they begin to kiss, and she begins to take off his shirt. Underneath, he is wearing her undergarments. A little shocked initially, she seems to brush it off and continues touching him underneath the brassiere he is wearing. My confusion continues when they do this whole shopping thing and then go to a party where Einar is dressed and tells everyone her name is Lili. Now the messed-up part was when Lili kisses another dude and starts seeing him on the side.
The whole thing with meeting Hans Axgil was quite off base just a bit because Einar and Hans were best friends who kissed long ago in grade school. Still, it is important because this instance sets up a love triangle and questions about who turned who. Gerda goes to meet Hans Axgil. Hans tells someone on the phone that he has a “Danish girl” waiting for him. During their conversation, he tells Gerda he loves her artwork. Still, he cannot represent her because he doesn’t specialize in those kinds of paintings but asks to meet the model. Gerda tells him it’s Einar’s cousin, but she is not around. However, she tells Axgil that Einar is waiting for them at home though. When they get home, shit is about to go down because Einar is dressed as Lili, and Gerda is entirely at a loss as she has to say the reverse of Einar out and Lili in town. Things get a little awkward when Lili straight-up flirts with Hans until she becomes frazzled and runs off.
Now the self-discovery journey for Lili was tough with some doctors who didn’t know what was going on. After they move to Paris, Einar goes to Paris’ red-light district and enters a peep-show club. Rather than doing what men usually do in there, he watches the woman strip and mimics her movements. After continued dressing up and the Hans drama, Gerda wonders if she was the one that triggered Einar’s transformation. It was sad to see them go to doctor after doctor who wanted to lobotomize Einar or even lock him up because they thought he was a pervert. I think one of them even did extreme shock therapy. The most sickening scene was when Lili was walking from an appointment, and she is attacked by two men. They beat her up for no reason besides the fact that she is dressed as a woman.
As Lili is on her journey of self-discovery, Gerda goes on one also. Even though her husband wants to be a woman, she soon finds love with Hans. This is complicated because you can tell she is extremely faithful to her husband. She loves the man who is about to be a woman and is also confused by the whole thing. She doesn’t know if she was the one who put the idea of being a woman in his head. It’s like the moment her world and paintings take off, her home life is confusing as everyone wants to know who the model is, but she can’t reveal it. That is some significant emotional baggage to have.
The two main actors in this film did a great job with their roles. Eddie Redmayne as Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe (Lili Elvenes) was okay. He wasn’t on the level of the Theory of Everything in this role. Still, he tried to convey the emotions and confusion that Einar/Lili was going through. Now I want to talk about Alicia Vikander as Gerda Wegener (née Gottlieb). She did a fantastic job and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. I want to say that she should’ve been put into the Best Actress category. Homegirl was in the whole movie and was actually the only actress. How the hell do you end up in supporting actress? Seeing the competition, it would’ve been a tough race but damn. That is some shady stuff right there.
The Danish Girl is a good film, but it seems like it is missing something. It didn’t leave me in awe or made me really have a significant emotional attachment to any of the characters. I was looking for more but don’t know what it is. The acting was spot on and good but not groundbreaking. Give this movie a chance and see what you think.
