The Danish Girl
Director: Tom
Hooper
Writer: David
Ebershoff
Starring: Alicia
Vikander, Eddie Redmayne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Ben Whishaw, Amber
Heard
Rating: Two and a
half stars out of five
Available in
theaters now.
The Danish Girl is
a movie about choices, both before and behind the camera. Within the
film itself, it appears, for all the pain and confusion that follows
the choice, the right one was made. It's a different story beyond the
scope of the biopic account of 1920s artist – and first known
recipient of sex reassignment surgery – Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmayne),
formerly known as Einar Wegener, and Wegener's wife, Gerda (Alicia
Vikander). Director Tom Hooper makes a series of stylistic and
structural decisions that, almost without fail, work to hinder and/or
muddle the thematic meaning, and sometimes the motivation, of these
characters. He complicates a story that, for all the difficulty that
comes in deciding to fully become who you are inside, is at its core
still simple – not
easy, but clear.
It
makes sense why Hooper would do the things he does, because he has it
in him to put beautifully evocative images on the screen, given the
right context. The problem is, he often does not utilize the context
in a way that makes sense for the cinematic language that has
developed over the last century-plus. Precedents matter, and when a
filmmaker mistakes the meaning of a shot choice, it can wreak havoc
on the message that director wants to convey. This happens often
throughout the two-hour runtime of The Danish Girl,
but there are three in the early going that unbalance it in a way
that it struggles to recover from.
It is
a wordless sequence near the beginning of the film, with Redmayne's
Einar wandering through the costume racks of a local ballet company
in Copenhagen, touching the women's clothing that surrounds him,
yearning for the femininity that the audience knows from the film's
subject matter is inside him. If Hooper had stopped this scene here,
all would be well. However, he keeps going, allowing Einar to stumble
upon Amber Heard's Ulla, a ballerina friend of his and Gerda's, as
she is hard at work practicing while being fitted for the right
costume. If the costume had been the focus of the subsequent series
of shots, it would have paired with Einar's seconds-earlier
fascination with the clothing rack, but it is not. Ulla as a whole is
the focus, with the camera pulled back in a voyeuristic medium-wide
shot. Einar watches her dance, sees the costumer's hands grasping
Ulla's body, and the longing music plays on the soundtrack. Hooper is
likely trying to showcase Einar's longing for the feminine shape, but
it reads as the classic male gaze moment. It feels something like a
less sleazy Brian De Palma movie, seemingly revealing romantic, or at
least lustful, feelings for Ulla. That is not the case for the
character, of course. Einar is not a lascivious peeping Tom, as
becomes apparent throughout the rest of the film, but in this moment
it looks like he could be, obfuscating who this person is in the
context of the movie.
Likewise
for Einar's relationship with Gerda. For someone confused about his
gender identity, Einar reads as something of a horn dog while he and
Gerda attempt to get pregnant. Later intimate scenes between them
reveal stronger thematic ties to Einar's interior life, but the first
is like a pair of teenagers fooling around in the most
gender-stereotypical way. It doesn't make sense.
The
same can be said for the film's statement-of-purpose scene, when
Gerda, an artist like her husband, requests that Einar act as a
stand-in for one of her portraits of Ulla. He must wear stockings on
his legs and hold the dress close to his body for Gerda to get the
pose right in her piece. This is treated like a big reveal, a
lightbulb moment that crystalizes Einar's real identity in his mind,
but it feels false in the moment. That is because it is false, given
information Hooper has already displayed, and a later admittance that
Lili, the woman Einar would become, had always had avenues to get
out, even as a young child.
Even
with unclear filmmaking surrounding her, Vikander gives The
Danish Girl graceful life at its
center. She imbues Gerda with a character arc that goes beyond line
reading and facial expression. She begins bouncy in her movements,
perhaps slightly self-conscious and more than a little mischievous,
the kind of person who might hide behind a corner to surprise you
with tickles. As things deteriorate for her understanding of what her
marriage would be, she moves with more strain, the light in her eyes
turns to something more like a blanket of black velvet. She never
loses her tenderness for the person she chose to spend her life with
when she thought she was getting a better deal. Her support for
Einar's choice to live as Lili, despite never having been provided
the cultural understanding of such a decision, is kindness at its
best.
Unfortunately,
The Danish Girl lets
down its lead actress with choices like the stylistic ones above and
a bizarre structure that incorporates two climaxes. It never fully
gets back to the level of dramatic tension after the first climax,
and the second feels more like an obligation to complete the life
story of these two people rather than a necessary piece of the film.
It is not without its excellence, but The Danish Girl is
a disappointment for how most of its issues are avoidable with a
slight change of purpose behind the camera.
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