The Danish Girl (2015)
R
3.5 Stars out of 5
Director Tom HooperWriter Lucinda Coxon (screenplay), David Ebershoff (novel)
Cinematography Danny Cohen
Music Alexandre Desplat
Alicia Vikander Gerda Wegener
Eddie Redmayne Einar Wegener/Lilli Elbe
Amber Heard Ulla
Ben Whishaw Henrik Sandahl
Matthias Shoenaerts Hans Axgil
Sebastian Koch Dr. Kurt Warnekros
“You’re not like other girls.”
Henrik to Lilli
The story of Lilli Elbe begins in 1926 Copenhagen where
Einar Wegener is a successful landscape artist and his artist wife, Gerda
(Alicia Vikander) is a frustrated portraitist. Gerda is frustrated because many
around her applaud her skill, but decry her subject material. Portraits are not
in demand in 1920’s Copenhagen. In the early stages of the film, as Hooper
works to help his audience learn who Einar and Gerda are, how they love one
another, respect one another’s skills, he will also play with a couple of
cinematic techniques to elicit a sense of touch, feel and look. Multiple scenes
are displayed showing Einar as he runs his hands along a row of dresses,
caresses the feel of lace, or stares intently as Gerda removes her silk
stockings. Einar’s world is one of barely suppressed longing. In the relaxed
pace of this movie, it will soon become clear that Einar does not know exactly what it
is he longs for, though he will shortly thereafter finally discern what it is.
But this is also Tom Hooper’s world and he really wants the viewer to “sense”
it.
Ulla (Amber Heard), a cocky ballerina is Gerda’s normal
model for a series of paintings Gerda is working on; a ballet theme – one more
attempt to escape the world of unpopular portraits. Rushing to complete a
deadline and lacking Ulla to work with as her model, Gerda asks Einar to pose
in her place. At first it is only a stocking drawn up and over his hairy leg
and a barely fitting ballet slipper; then it is Ulla’s ballet gown draped
across his tense and uncomfortable torso. He is embarrassed, especially so when
Ulla enters unexpectedly and makes a small joke at Einar’s expense. His tension
is soon displaced as Einar looks down his gown-draped body. This scene may
disconcert the movie’s audience but it is clearly a comforting acceptance to
Einar. This gradual tease and acceptance will anticipate a broader and fuller
transition for Einar. The acme of this change will come at a reception Gerda
wants Einar to attend. He hates such affairs, but when Gerda displaying her own
mixed feelings on the topic, asks Einar to go to a reception dressed as a
woman, he quickly agrees. Einar will attend as his own female cousin, Lilli (a
name made up on the spot for the made up cousin). At the reception, Einar doing
his best impersonation of Lilli will clearly be uncomfortable for a while, but
then he meets Henrik (Ben Whishaw), Einar will fade from control as Lilli takes
over, no longer an impersonation. Lilli and Hendrik will converse; and Einar
will begin his irreversible move from Einar to Lilli.
As Lilli becomes the more dominant participant in the
Einar/Lilli character, her emergence will be facilitated by Gerda as she begins
to paint Lilli, and these new paintings become a commercial, if not artistic
sensation for Gerda. Again Gerda’s mixed emotions and motivations in her
evolving relationship with Einar/Lilli will play a significant role in the
forward movement of the plot. Gerda will become the breadwinner for the Wegener
family, and Lilli now increasingly in control of Einar-Lilli will begin a kind
of role reversal as she leaves financial considerations to Gerda. Lilli will
begin to focus on herself from a visual sense that jives with her internal
view. Such a change was not anticipated by Gerda. It was convenient for her
career’s sake (she now has the missing subject material for her painting), but
catastrophic for her marriage. The tension will mount. Einar will seek medical
help, but in the late twenties, no such help really exists.
Einar and Gerda will bring in a childhood friend of Einar’s,
Hans (Mathias Schoenaert) to help in what way he can. His help becomes confused
as Einar recedes, and Gerda becomes isolated in a marital sense. In time a German
doctor, Dr. Kurt Warenkros will be found. He will prove (to some extent) to be
the surgical solution for the now thoroughly Lillified Lilli/Einar. He will
warn Lilli and Gerda of the dangers Lilli faces, but they will nevertheless proceed. Part of
the reason they will do so, is due to the medieval state of psychological help
that was present at the time for Einar/Lilli. One doctor will go so far as to
threaten incarceration after having diagnosed Einar as schizophrenic.
And this last point is the other major problem I have with
the film: the conflation of sexual dysphoria with dissociative identity
disorder (aka the split personality aspect of psychotic schizophrenia). Is it
typical of persons with sexual dysphoria to suffer from DID? If so, I was not
aware of it. And if not so, does this movie do those with sexual dysphoria by
depicting it in the manner in which it depicted in this movie a disservice?
Possibly the actual Lilli had DID, and the movie is staying true to the truth;
or possibly it is a cinematic metaphor that Hooper wants to employ to somehow make
sexual dysphoria more understandable to the public. Perhaps, but I find either
explanation plus the distraction of the many, many landscape scenes throughout
the movie to only be distractions. I get that the cinematography is beautiful
and is a kind of metaphor for the inner Lilli, as well as a reference to the
painting occupations of Gerda and Einar, but to me it becomes an intolerable
distraction from the movie’s central story: Einar’s transition and his torment
throughout the process to Lilli.
That being said, this is a beautifully and remarkably filmed
movie. The landscape scenes do appear to be masterpieces. Coupled to the
exterior shots of scenery, Hooper films many of the interior shots in Einar’s
and Gerda’s apartment in Copenhagen – a room evidently designed by someone in
love with geometry; straight lines intersecting in a perpendicular manner with
other straight lines. All of the shots from within their apartment or in the
local ballet studio that show Einar staring through large number of tutu’s as
he speaks to Ulla could be an introductory course in mis en scene. Added to
these shots is my favorite from the movie: Hendrik lives on a street of bright
yellow row houses, on a road that seems to go to infinity. Lilli will walk down
and then back up this street after her clandestine meeting with Hendrik. She
will be initially sure of herself, then only confused. Does the infinitude of
the street serve to underscore her mood, or does it merely serve to demonstrate
to the audience Hooper’s eye for the visual; sadly, as much as I loved the
shot, I feel it is the latter.
Again, this is a beautiful looking, beautiful sounding and
beautifully acted movie. Besides the incredible visual and musical components
to this film, the acting of Vikander and Redmayne are alone reasons enough to
see this movie. I believe the typical movie-goer will have their senses
delighted, will learn some of the pain that afflicts the sexual dysphoric, but
also I think will have missed a fuller picture (and again I use that word with
intention) of how Einar/ Lilli felt, or how any of her modern contemporaries
felt. I think Hooper loves and respects the subject of his movie, but I also
think he loves more the visual component of his story than the interior. See it
for yourself, for it is worth seeing, but I think you should wonder a little at
whether Lillie’s story is as foremost in this movie as the landscape. I felt as
if she as a character faded back into the picture Hooper sought to draw; she
became immersed in his landscape as she once was within Einar’s.
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