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The Danish Girl – Movie review

8 January, 2016 — by Ben Rabinovich0

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Like its subject matter, The Danish Girl is a study in binaries. The first half of the film is a powerful exploration of sexual identity and the conflicts – internal and external – that inevitably follow. The second half is a misguided struggle to explore multiple story threads at the expense of the ones that truly matter.

Eddie Redmayne is appropriately cast as Einar Wegener, a popular landscape artist in the mid-1920s Copenhagen, who unintentionally resurrects a long lost fact about himself – that he identifies with being a woman. His naturally fair and boyish complexion made his transformation into Lili aesthetically believable, but it was his layered performance that made it moving and beautiful.

Director Tom Hooper, who has previously worked with Redmayne on Les Misérables, emphasises the sensuality of discovery to show that there is more to Einar than meets the eye; more than even he knows himself. As he walks across to visit Ulla, his ballerina friend played by Amber Heard, his hand almost subconsciously stretches out to feel the women’s clothing. As Einar gazes at Ulla practising, she remarks that he has only ever had eyes for one woman. She means Gerde, Einar’s wife, but the implication for us is Lili. This builds up to the very conscious handling of the ballerina dress when he poses for Gerde, played by the ubiquitous Alicia Vikander. It’s not a coincidence; Hooper is keen to show that Lili is not a sudden pang of realisation, but rather a gradual resurrection of the person Einar knew he was all along. He came not to see Ulla in the dress, but himself – he just didn’t know it yet. It is unsurprising that he continues to return to the dance studio, as he becomes Lili.

The film excels in presenting the climax of Lili’s figurative birth. The camerawork highlights the pure sensory overload that Einar experiences: he is dazzled by the deeply buried sensations and realisations, suddenly coming sharply into focus and coursing through what he soon realises to be her body. It is in this state of perceiving the world anew through the eyes of a woman, that Amber Heard’s Ulla gives her – like a newborn child – a name.

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Once Lili awakes, the second part of the film hones in on the exploration of gender binaries – presenting them as boundaries meant to be surmounted and focusing on the delicate subject of what it is to become and be ‘a woman’. However, here is where The Danish Girl stumbles.

Whereas Redmayne excellently gives life to the traumatic internal conflict that immediately follows Lili’s birth, as the film continues, this is gradually resolved with Einar’s identity being put to rest, leaving the film struggling to successfully investigate Lili’s internal and external conflicts. It reminded me of John Berger’s seminal work, Ways of Seeing, in which he distilled men’s attitude towards women culturally throughout history with the harsh summary: “men act and women appear”.

“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at… Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”

Einar became Lili whilst being surveyed by Gerde for her painting, and in a way Lili becomes nothing more than a sight. She stops painting, arguing it was Einar’s passion, and proceeds to spend her days being codified on canvas by her wife, looking at her reflection, be it in the mirror or in paint. It is not a critique or analysis of what it is to be – or become – a woman but rather a criticism of the film for failing to do it adequately.

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The film fails to sufficiently show the tremendous challenges Lili had to overcome, particularly when she decided to go ahead with the potentially fatal operations to physically become a woman. There are attempts: an act of discrimination in the park, a brush with the medical establishment keen to lock up ‘Einar’, but that is all they are – broad brush strokes that do not carry the requisite weight for such a delicate subject.

Even Lili’s singularly greatest contribution to the world, her autobiographical work Man into Woman is only fleetingly referenced. Instead, the film elects to show Lili working as a lowly shop girl, teaching women how to ‘walk into’ a spritz of perfume.

The Danish Girl is a film that is very aware of the significance of its subject matter but ultimately fails to convey it properly, losing focus and perspective just as Lili gains hers. 2/5

Check out the rest of the latest cinema releases in our new film reviews section, including the far more successful Room and Jennifer Lawrence’s Joy.

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The Danish Girl
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