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If I had to describe the films of Tom Hooper, I suppose it would be the films are like white elephants. Painfully tasteful, devoid of personality, overloaded with asymmetrical framing, glossy images, and emotionally detached, I do not respond well to them. If I can avoid them, I do, but I committed to watching the nominees in the major Oscar categories again this year, and had to endure this.
The Danish Girl tells the story of Lili Elbe, one of the first known transgender woman to complete gender confirmation surgery. Well, that’s what it purports it is about, but it’s really based upon a highly fictional book by David Ebershoff. I haven’t read the source material, but the film keeps the inner life of both its characters at arm’s length, afraid of the messy details of what they’re experiencing. Instead, what we get is two hours of Eddie Redmayne staring off into the middle distance, doing his best to look like an ethereal, feminine waif, and a deeply uncomfortable insistence on the superficial exteriors of feminine performance.
There was the tremendous potential, in another director’s hands perhaps, to dive deep into the issues of the male gaze, gender performance, body dysphoria, but The Danish Girl will have none of that. It brings this issues up in large, bold text, but doesn’t meaningful engage in them. Scene after scene finds Lili touching fabrics, crying, and watching women perform in heightened circumstances, but we see no glimpse of her inner life. We have no idea what she is thinking, feeling, or where these issues are stemming from.
We meet Lili prior to the transition, and there is no glimpse of anything being out of the ordinary in her marriage to Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander). It isn’t until Gerda asks her husband to wear some tights and ballet shoes to fill in for an absentee model that the first stirrings of Lili’s transition are felt. They come out of nowhere, because we have no clue who Einer Wegener is as a person, let alone who Lili is or will become. And Gerda’s story is filled with promising and fertile material, none of it used. She and Lili remained close friends throughout, and the irony of her own painting career taking off as she finds her husband’s female alter ego as her subject matter is not utilized. Neither is the question of her sexuality, nor the eventual estrangement that happened between them.
Try as valiantly as they might, neither Redmayne nor Vikander can overcome the precocious fantasy of this script, which never allows for honest depictions of emotions, but handsome facsimiles instead. Redmayne’s Oscar nomination feels like it went to the role and not his performance, which is mostly a combination of tics, stares, sighs, crying, and fondling of fabrics with his long fingers. But props to him for the courage of that full-frontal scene. Vikander manages to do better, much better in fact. Probably because she’s the closest thing to a fleshed out character that the film ever gets, or maybe Vikander’s soulful eyes and churning emotional states are just handled better by all involved. And the supporting players are wasted as Amber Heard's free-spirited ballerina, Ben Whishaw's supportive paramour, and Matthias Schoenaerts' childhood best friend are handled well by their actors, but shuffled off screen too soon. It’s heart is in a well-meaning place, but this is regressive, too tasteful, and without feeling. The Danish Girl is yet another immaculate diorama of white elephant cinema. Lili Elbe's story deserves better than this.
