The New Year is here and the race for the Oscars is starting in earnest with the release of Tom Hooper’s drama about artist Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne), the first man to opt for gender reassignment surgery. The film follows Wegener’s journey to find his true identity and the effect this has on his relationship with his wife, Gerda (the brilliant Alicia Vikander), who takes steps to ensure he can become the woman he deserves to be.
Sadly, while the story itself is both fascinating and extraordinary, the film that tells it is rather plain. Einar Wegener’s road to becoming Lili Elbe and the role of the endlessly devoted and supportive Gerda in achieving this deserves a much better film than the one Hooper has put together. While The Danish Girl is not without its charms, it often feels rather sterile and static, somewhat removed from the drama of the real events. Danny Cohen’s cinematography is indeed very attractive – at times breathtaking – but it never quite manages to be beautiful, and seems more intent towards creating a portfolio for an Oscar nod for both he and Hooper than crafting a working film. Too many times the images seem like a painting rather than a moving picture, a shame given that the beauty of cinema is that they can be both.
Having received an Academy Award for Best Director in 2011 for The King’s Speech, Hooper seems to have been chasing the chance to repeat his success ever since, first with Les Misérables and now with The Danish Girl. As a result, his dedication to his art has been lost in favour of dedication to critics and, having been so risky and ambitious when depicting the musical adaptation of Hugo’s French Revolution, he seems to have pared back and played it very safe with a standard piece of awards-bait. There is the feeling that one eye is left on the camera lens and the other on the Academy voters, with the actors and the story left neglected.
Fortunately, his cast are more than capable of bringing some gravitas to proceedings by ignoring his pedestrian direction and striking out on their own. Naturally Redmayne will receive a lot of attention for his performance – as indeed he ought to – but the real star of the show is the terrific Alicia Vikander. Her performance is utterly captivating and wholly representative of a good film struggling to escape from an average one, corseted by its own director. It is Vikander more than anyone who brings out the grit, passion and conflict that the story needs to breathe, while Redmayne’s haunting characterisation of Lili has moments of true brilliance that briefly break the film out of its plodding passivity. Redmayne’s performance is not perfect, however, and still contains a few too many of his personal ticks and habits – e.g. constant smiling or lip quivering – to make it quite the outstanding and moving performance it should be, and his subtle and gentle embodiment of Lili is sometimes a little too fragile to convey the conviction and courage of the real Ms. Elbe.
There are also strong – albeit fleeting – performances from the likes of Ben Whishaw, Matthias Schoenaerts and Sebastian Koch, as well as tiny cameos for Nicholas Woodeson and Rebecca Root (both of whom are entirely wasted). The chemistry between Whishaw and Redmayne during their aborted courtship is particularly noteworthy, forming the basis for a rather underdeveloped subplot.
The last couple of years have seen a rise in transgender representation in film and television – Orange is the New Black (which saw Laverne Cox become the first transgender actor to be nominated for an Emmy), the BBC’s underrated Boy Meets Girl (incidentally starring Rebecca Root), Tangerine (which may well see the first Oscar nomination for a transgender actor). While The Danish Girl does not include any transgender actors or crew members in principal roles, it does follow in the vein of Amazon Prime’s award-winning series Transparent and continues the recent effort to depict transgender narratives. Lucinda Coxon’s screenplay treats the lives of Gerda and Lili in a respectful and tasteful manner and the focus on the need to transform one’s identity in the process of gender reassignment is handled appropriately, allowing the subject matter the dignity it deserves and the film to be accessible to both supportive and less supportive audiences.
There is worth to the film and there is merit in its performances and script, but it is ultimately Hollywood’s attempt at an LGBT movie and therefore lacks the provocative and personal emotion of a less mainstream, less heterosexual attempt. The Danish Girl is a perfectly decent, passable film – similar to (though better and more sensitive than) The Imitation Game – but it could and should be so much more.
The Danish Girl is showing at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 14 January 2016.
The Danish Girl Trailer
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