Is Oscarlicious a legitimate word? If not it should be considering this is what best describes The Danish Girl. With Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper at the helm of affairs, everything from the performances to the costumes and production design makes it seem destined for an Academy award.
The Danish Girl is adapted from novelist David Ebershoff’s fictionalised account of Lily Elbe’s life, the first person to undergo a gender reassignment surgery in 1930. Apart from the anticipated Oscars, what you can expect is absolute wonder and amazement as we see Eddie Redmayne’s hypnotic magnificence on screen. If you thought he was brilliant as Stephen Hawking wait till you watch him here as Einar transforming into Lily. His best performance so far!
The film opens in Copenhagen in the 1920s. Einar is a successful painter and husband to fellow artist Gerda Wegner (Alicia Vikander). When a model doesn’t reach on time, Gerda asks her husband to put on stockings and a dress and pose so that she could complete her half made portrait. Christened Lily, she becomes quite literally an artist’s creation and soon assumes a life of her own.
Lily is only a muse to Gerda but for Einar she unleashes something unfathomable and existential. There is a surge of emotions as we see Einar feel the soft fabric of his wife’s dress, touching the silk stockings as his fingers trace the hemline. For Gerda it’s a little game but as Einar tells her at one point in the film, “I become what you draw”.
The scenes where Redmayne wrestles between his two selves are the most poignant.
He explores Lily in mirrors, in the studied feminine movements of women around him, reflected in window glasses and summoned through a coy smile or a graceful hand gesture. The scene where he stands stark naked gazing teary eyed into a mirror with his penis tucked between his tightly closed thighs is perhaps the most striking.
It’s not long before Lily comes alive but that journey wreaks havoc in the lives of Gerda and Einar. Thematically, in many ways, The Danish Girl is similar to The Theory of Everything. It is about an individual’s life struggles and choices he makes but also shows us how those around him, those who love him, also suffer as much as they are forced to let go of what they thought was theirs.
Gerda is torn between her love for the man she thinks she knows – the man who has now ceased to exist. She has to come to terms with the fact that the only way she can truly love her husband is by letting go of him. She must honour his choice by accepting him as Lily when he is most resplendent and happy but that also entails completely losing the man she married and loved.
Undoubtedly, Alicia Vikander has a more challenging role of the two and she is exquisite. Her loneliness, her desire – a lilting presence throughout.
The subject of a transwoman couldn’t have been more topical. At a time when gay marriages are being legalised, Caitlyn Jenner’s much celebrated and publicised transformation and a long fight still ahead to counter homophobia, Tom Hooper film is an empathetic and tastefully-made film. The pace, however, staggers and would take some getting used to.
What also seems missing is a slightly edgy treatment that the subject and the times we live in, warrant. The Danish Girl is a delicate handling of what essentially is a love story made palatable for everyone, thanks to its sensitive treatment.
I’ll give it 4 QUINTS OUT OF 5 especially for the performances. This could well be Eddie Redmayne’s car to take him to his second consecutive Oscar win! Yes fingers crossed for Leonardo but who knows!
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