In the latest edition of Jumpcut, we turn our attention to the Oscar-nominated biopic The Danish Girl starring Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander for a three-minute spoiler-free review. Expect more of these quick film reviews in the near future, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Crooked Table YouTube channel for all the latest from CrookedTable.com!
For a film inspired by the lives of 1920s Danish painters Einar and Gerda Wegener, The Danish Girl couldn’t be more timely in its delicate handling of the transgender movement. Eddie Redmayne — last year’s Oscar winner for his stunning performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything — stars as Einar, who finds his old life slipping away when innocent circumstances inadvertently reawaken a repressed gender identity crisis. What begins as a harmless exercise in make-believe — perpetuated by his wife Gerda (played by Alicia Vikander) — soon threatens to overtake Einar’s life and his marriage, as he realizes that maybe he was meant to be a woman all along.
As crafted by director Tom Hooper (who worked with Redmayne on 2012 musical Les Misérables), The Danish Girl is a lush period piece that — much like other Oscar-nominated films like Carol and Brooklyn — features outstanding costumes and production design. Such detail goes a long way toward selling the authenticity of the piece, and Danny Cohen’s cinematography particularly shines during a key sequence in which Einar secretly visits a peep show.
It is in wordless scenes like this one perhaps that Redmayne does his best work in the film. He’s such a beautifully expressive performer that much of his character’s transformation between Einar and his new identity as Lili Elbe takes place solely in his eyes. Likewise, Vikander caps off a year of wonderful work in films as diverse as Ex Machina and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with some nuanced work of her own. Much of Gerda’s role in the story is contingent on Einar’s journey. Yet, her character never falls into the trap of being a passive bystander in the film itself. Right until the end, she retains her agency and has an integral part to play, a clear reason why Vikander is among the frontrunners to take home the Best Supporting Actress statuette on Oscar night.
Where The Danish Girl falls short is in its storytelling. The film makes the classic Hollywood mistake of telling more than it shows. The foundation for Einar’s life as Lili is repeatedly referred to, but a few simple lines of dialogue fail to effectively establish the deep-rooted connection he feels to this other identity. Moreover, his journey as shown during the film doesn’t really represent much of an evolution from one individual to the other, as once the Lili identity has been set free she never truly fades away again.
While they are two wildly different kinds of films, The Danish Girl doesn’t quite delve into the theme of gender identity as deeply as something like cult classic Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The sense of desperation and confusion that Einar/Lili experience is only rarely articulated to great effect. As a story about a marriage put to the ultimate test, The Danish Girl works about as well as the equally flawed The Theory of Everything. So, while The Danish Girl makes an admirable effort in shedding light on Lili’s story, one can’t help but imagine that a future release might provide a more complex exploration of the transgender movement than Hooper’s film does.
Rating: 3 out of 5
The Danish Girl stars Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, Amber Heard, Matthias Schoenaerts and Ben Whishaw. It is directed by Tom Hooper. Robert Yaniz Jr. can be reached on Twitter at @crookedtable.For more, visit the following: Crooked Table Videos: http://www.crookedtable.com/category/videos/ Crooked Table Reviews: http://www.crookedtable.com/category/reviews/ Subscribe to the Crooked Table Podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/al/podcast/crooked-table-podcast/id897846548?mt=2 Connect with Crooked Table on social media: http://www.crookedtable.com/contact/