Gerda is immediately shuffled into the typical “But I want my HUSBAND back!” role, and keeps a mostly-stiff upper lip through Lili’s transition despite her grief at losing “Einar” (Lili’s former name).
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The real Lili Elbe was a pioneer in the LGBT community, and The Danish Girl shows a commitment to artistically rendering the iconoclast of a less-accepting era while also respecting the tale’s social relevance today.
Despite his Oscar win and frequent praise from critics, the Danish Girl actor insists he still has to work incredibly hard. But it’s a possession that can not be exorcized, as doctor after doctor classifies Lili as insane leading to one narrow escape through a window as men charge down a corridor carrying a straitjacket – as achingly, sentimentally sensitive as the film is to Lili’s painful process of self-actualization, narratively subtle it is not.
Eddie Redmayne had career worries after winning his Oscar. As the film opens, Elbe self-presents as Einar Wegener, a famed landscape artist in 1920s Copenhagen, happily married to fellow artist Gerda, portrayed by Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), who herself gives a noteworthy performance destined to be part of the coming awards season.
So we’re left with a film that nods to, but then delicately looks away from anything that threatens to steer the narrative away from the single note of Finding The Courage To Be Yourself.
“When I first thought of doing the movie, it was considered a hard film to finance”, Hooper says. It expresses the balance in their relationship and yet the use of the wide lens for her low angle creates a sense of asymmetry in the framing, expressing the fact that the characters’ relationship is not quite as ideal as they imagine. When Einar recaps his artists ball experience for Gerda, he tells her, “There was a moment when I was just Lili”, and moments like that soon became the rule rather than the exception. I found it extraordinarily passionate and deeply felt. Vikander does wonders as a wife who stands by her woman. Campaigns are expected to be heavily mounted in Best Picture, Best Director (for Hooper), Best Actor (for Redmayne) Best Supporting Actress (for Vikander, provided she doesn’t go Lead), Best Adapted Screenplay (for Coxon), Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Hairstyling & Makeup, and Best Original Score.
The filmmakers will tell you over and over again that The Danish Girl is first and foremost a love story between Lili and Gerda, and they’re certainly not wrong. I’m really looking forward to seeing that. I didn’t know that.
EDDIE:I’ll never forget Alicia’s audition-we read a scene together, and I turned to Tom, and he was sobbing. It moves along to Lili’s newfound attraction to her aggressive male suitor, subtly playing into the very type of sexism that I had hoped the film would more blatantly address.
It was while filming 2012’s “Les Miserables”, in which Redmayne played the tender revolutionary Marius, that the two began plotting “The Danish Girl”, based on David Ebershoff’s novel of the true-life events.
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But there’s a line in the beginning of the film that stayed with me, nagging at the edge of my mind the whole way through, which made it challenging to fully enjoy the movie. Connection and friction between two people is very interesting, I think.
