Review of The Danish Girl (2015) by Chevy C — 24 Jan 2016

The Danish Girl Review.

The Danish Girl is directed by The King's Speech and Les Miserables' director Tom Hooper and stars Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander and Matthias Schoenaerts This movie was highly anticipated due to the subject matter and served as a potential "Oscar bait" film given the director and the speculation of this becoming an acting vehicle for Eddie Redmayne who is coming off fresh from his recent academy award win at last year's Academy Award ceremony. I admit, I had some intrigue about the movie, but I wouldn't say I was excited for it not anticipating it. However since it's Oscar Season, as I like to call it, it's high time to visit Tom Hooper's next attempt to wow critics with his spectacle for capturing great performances, in not so great stories.

The movie is about Einar Wegener (played beautiful both literally and figuratively by Eddie Redmayne), a 1920s Danish painter who has a rather hidden, but intrigued fascination with dresses whom, after being persuaded by his wife Gerda (played by the beautiful Alicia Vikander), dresses up as a woman in order to attend an art exhibit with her as her 'female' escort under the guise of "Lili". To their surprise however, what should have been just a harmless game between them and their close friend, suddenly becomes a spectacle of confused sexual identity. Along the way, he slowly begins to question himself more and realizes that, much to his distressed but mostly supportive wife, he is actually a she in a man's body. Gerda, trying to help him come to terms with who he or she might be, calls the help of Einar's childhood friend Hans Axgil (played by Matthias Schoenaerts) whom due to complications between him and Einar's father, has not had contact with him for decades. The movie centers around Einar slowly disappearing as Lili soon tries to step out of her proverbial womb and into the world as the person she was suppose to be, and that's about as much I can say without getting into specifics.

Let's get the negatives out of the way, because while there are a few, there is also a lot good to say about it. To begin, I need to confess that I'm not a fan of Tom Hooper's directorial style. He's always struck me as the kind of director who focuses more on getting an emotional response from viewers rather than focusing on actual plot or story, and that wouldn't be too much of a problem, if at times some of the emotional scenes didn't feel forced. The King's Speech, Les Miserables, and even Elizabeth I all suffer from the same melodramatic "tug at your strings" feel to it and while I do love how he manages to properly craft out scenes in his signature style, I hate when movies like these try too hard to get you to feel emotional over something that, to be perfectly honest, doesn't really warrant it. The Danish Girl... Sadly suffers from this as well. I'm not exaggerating when I say that after the first 30 minutes of this movie, there is not a single scene where a character either isn't moping, or crying, or angry, or upset, the entire movie becomes this giant ball of negativity even in scenes as irrelevant as an art gallery. I swear, I've never seen a movie this needlessly melodramatic since Everest and at least that movie waited until the first half to let the overdramaticness sink in. "But Sebastian, this is based on true events. This is how it happened" except not! To be fair, I didn't read the actual story that this movie is based around, and even though I am aware it is based on true events, I can guarantee you that no "real life" story is as overdramatic as this.

I understand that this movie is taking on a touchy subject matter and I don't mind movies with sad or depressing tones or atmospheres, but this movie's tone is at times laughably inconsistent. It starts off as this nice, endearing story about a painter who feels something snap inside that allows him to wake up as someone different, only to shift into a depressingly moody and at times, cliche tone that feels like it's trying way too hard to hammer in that the story and character are sad. To give you an idea as to how pathetic some of these cliches are, there is a scene where Gerda, for some reason gets upset in her art gallery and goes outside in the rain. She gets in front of the door and a woman stops her telling her to get an umbrella, but she says no, then the woman offers to call her a taxi, and she still says no. Why? So that we can have the obligatory crying out in the rain scene that is so damn generic and overused that it was even featured in Tom Hooper's last movie Les Miserables with Eponine singing 'On My Own' out in the rain, to symbolize that she's sad even though her sad tone of voice and teary-eyed face were clue enough to prove it. I also found that the pacing in this movie was pretty clunky, as it felt fast paced at times where it clearly needed room to breathe, and at other times agonizingly slow to the point where you are fighting the edge to fall asleep. A lot of these scenes that served to showcase development in character, were pretty much wasted for moments of emotion-baiting and as such made a lot of motivations and personality shifts unbelievably unnatural, like with how Gerda was perfectly fine with Einar dressing in drag and even wearing her night robe to bed while they were about to consummate, only to turn into this moody and always on edge woman who can't go one scene without crying over something. This movie has more scenes of people crying than scenes of people acting.

Thankfully, that's where the negatives end. Now onto the positives. First off, lets get the biggest positive I can give this movie, despite Hooper's shotty directing, Eddie Redmayne beautifully transforms into a completely different human being. His transition from man to woman, while at times rushed due to the sloppy pacing, was beautifully executed and his acting is shockingly better than that of his academy award winning performance in The Theory Of Everything. He bears so much subtlety and believability to every role he plays, and actually reminds me of a young Laurence Olivier, and despite the character himself not able to properly transcend from man to woman again due to the sloppy pacing, the actor is able to flesh him out into less of a character and more of a human being. The rest of the actors do well enough on their own, but to be honest, this movie feels more like a vehicle for Eddie Redmayne's acting talent, and it shows that no other actor could have perfected the role of Einar/Lili the way he did. Despite everything I said about Tom Hooper's directing, I gotta give credit where it's due, and the man knows how to capture a scene brilliantly, both on a figurative and literal scale. One of my favorite scenes in the entire movie is when Lili goes to a backdoor peep show and as the model is moving her hands around seductively, Lili is mimicking her moves as she does, but we don't get to see Einar's face, rather we see his reflection through a transparent glass. We don't see Einar mimicking the moves, rather we see Lili trying to get a bigger grasp as to how a woman like her would behave, with the help of great lighting to help present this subtle but effective shot of a woman discovering who she is, despite being in a man's body.

The cinematography in this movie is surprisingly descent, able to properly capture both the character and still be visible enough to showcase the environment around them. I find it hard to believe how he was able to direct his actors to perform given some of the scenes in question that I can't really talk about due to graphic sexual content, but all I can say is this: an actor needs to put trust in the hands of his director in order to get the scene in question captured right, and upon seeing this film, I can tell immediately that for all intents and purposes, Hooper may not be the best at telling a good story, but is one of the best at directing his actors. The music itself was okay, it fit the tone of the film properly, though nothing really stands out from it as far as the music goes. The writing itself is also, just okay; it's clear this was based on a memoir and I understand the ramifications for adapting a nonfiction piece into film, but I would have still preferred to see better writing coming from a story with subject matter such as this.

Overall, The Danish Girl is NOT the masterpiece I was anticipating. It definitely showcases some amazing talent backed by equally amazing cinematography and descent writing, but the sloppy directing, inconsistent tone and lack of good pacing truly put this as one of Tom Hooper's weakest films. I love seeing period pieces like these especially those relevant to modern day issues such as the transgender community, but just because a movie tackles it's subject matter well, doesn't mean the rest of the movie is excused from flaws. Let's call this movie what it really is: Oscar bait. It's a descent enough film, but apart from the acting, cinematography, amazing chemistry from Redmayne and Vikander and subject matter, there's really not a lot more to talk about it. It's pretty disappointing to see such an amazing piece of acting wasted in a lukewarm film, but for anyone looking to see a film where Eddie Redmayne strips naked in front of a mirror (clearly a joke here), then this is the film you were looking for. For anyone looking for a more personal and in depth analysis at the transitioning from a man to a woman, you can definitely do better. It's not a bad movie by any means, but it's also not the masterpiece people would have expected it to be.

Overall Rating: 6 out of 10= Above Average.