Eddie Redmayne in another Oscar-worthy role.
The Danish Girl
Grade: B+
Director: Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech)
Screenplay: Lucinda Coxon from David Ebershoff novel
Cast: Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina), Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything)
Rating: R
Runtime: 120 min.
by John DeSando
“God made me this way, but the doctor is curing me of the sickness that was my disguise.” Lili (Eddie Redmayne)
In other words, it’s going to be painful for painter Lili Elbe (or Einar Wegener before the transgender operation) to become a woman, a state the highly-regarded Danish painter Wegener wants regardless of the outcome. Director Tom Hooper brings the eye-catching interior design of his Oscar-winning King’s Speech to another film about a prominent figure caught in his interior design so different from that of normal citizens.
In The Danish Girl, the transition of Einar to Lili is gently detailed, with mostly close-up shots of the two principals, perhaps to emphasize Einar’s overwhelming proclivity to act like a woman and his wife’s, Gerda’s (Alicia Vikander), utter love for a husband who is slipping away from her.
Although Redmayne snags another Oscar-worthy role, playing an outsider as he did with Stephen Hawking, Vikander also comports herself like a true Oscar-worthy actress, for she must show her limitless love for her husband yet face the inevitable disorienting fact that he becomes emotionally and gradually unable to act like a real husband to her.
Although Vikander will probably end up with no nomination for this role because it asks for no outbursts but a consistently loving nature, she still is the heart of the movie’s double-natured machinations. Vikander displays a deep affection for Lili that makes the film not just about gender-reassignment but also about marital devotion in the face of unthinkable challenge.
The Danish Girl is remarkably beautiful (Copenhagen is gorgeous and Redmayne androgynously radiant as woman or man) yet lacking a vital screenplay that reflects the unnerving drama that must have accompanied one of the first sex-change persons in world history.
It is mostly a slow exposition of marriage and life in the late ‘20’s, when men were men and not to be one was to be second-class—even if you formerly were a man.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
