Review of The Danish Girl (2015) by Bradley W — 05 Mar 2016

The Danish Girl gives us some phenomenal performances from Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander, but can also be dreadfully slow and uneventful. I was very intrigued by this movie before I saw it,mainly because of the cast and the interesting subject matter.

Director Tom Hooper has also given us some incredible films in the past, always giving us the most from the actors and production. The Danish Girl gives us some of the best work I have ever seen from Redmayne and Vikander, but I just found myself not getting engaged enough with the story.

While this may be the story of Einer Wegener/Lili Elbe, it's his wife Gerda Wegener that truly grabbed my full attention as a character in the film. Her difficulty grasping the situation and her attempts to understand and console Lili while also wanting to keep her husband is both tragic and sympathetic.

Vikander brilliantly plays this off. My bigges issue with is that they could have tackled so many issues and stories with this kind of situation and this time period, but the film drags on with the same stuff for so long that it just felt boring to be honest.

Lili Elbe was a fascinating individual, and I guess I wanted to see more from her story about going from a man to a woman. In this film she rarely faces any struggles in the real world other than some cliche movie doctors, and I wanted to see the difficulty living in a time period where this kind of life was just unheard of.