It's difficult to criticize the most mainstream queer movie this year and one of the most recognized trans movies ever. And I didn't hate it. I actually rather enjoyed it. But as I left the theater, I felt distinctly unfulfilled, because The Danish Girl leaves a lot to be desired, and worse, leaves a lot to be forgotten.
I'm not going to criticize it on its grounds as an adaptation of a fictionalized account of a real-life trans woman, because that's complicated and ultimately silly. And I won't complain about its joining the long list of films that use cisgender actors to portray transgender people; that I can forgive because, for me (and my privilege), the whole point of acting is pretending to be what we are not. I do take some issue with the film ending in our protagonist's death. Of course, her real-life counterpart, Lili Elbe, died after one of her experimental surgeries, so it's not entirely a fantasy ending. But the film neither explains her death nor justifies it. Despite the script's repeated attempts to describe the dangers involved in early sex reassignment surgery, Lili is shown to be coping well with her recovery in one scene, and then in the next, she is (apparently unsurprisingly) fatally ill.
I can probably just write this off as one of director Tom Hooper's bad directorial movements. We've seen before that he doesn't really care about plot timelines or editorial continuity -- remember Les Miserables, anybody? But it's a bit more problematic here, because mainstream queer cinema has a nasty history of its subjects dying. A good question here might ask why. Maybe the deaths of queer characters bring more gravity and sentiment to their stories (read: so the hegemony can pity them). Maybe the filmmakers are hoping to recreate tragic real-life stories (read: preventing stories of hope from reaching the mainstream). But I think the real issue is that the privileged masses don't want to see or hear a story of successful, affirming, lively queer characters who aren't bogged down in procedures and policing, who don't succumb to ostracism and brutality, and who self-determine their identities and behaviors in a safe and sane manner. I think we can all agree that we've seen maybe two or three big-budget, A-lister queer films that end in happiness. If that.
And yet, my frustrations with this trend don't really have much to do with this movie specifically. My annoyance with Tom Hooper's style very much applies. He seems to think that severe close-ups on bleary, teary faces make a movie Oscar-worthy, and he often delays in the hopes that he'll strike gold in the silences after dialogue. I wish he'd take some notes from his great success in The King's Speech instead and realize that, with the material he chooses, the gold is often found in the dialogue and when his actors bounce off each other. There are some real gems in the dialogue here (not many, but a few), and it's as if he skates over them so he can have another long shot on Eddie Redmayne's face.
Speaking of Redmayne, he is of course dazzling. I wasn't really feeling his character, though, probably partly because the script does not give him much to work with. Lili as she is portrayed in the film is just not very likeable. Apparently lost in her own mind, she is constantly downcast, weepy, and prone to bizarre turns. Redmayne's performance is fine, to be sure, but I never felt much attached to his Lili, and so her death was more a sentimental indulgence than plot point at the end. Alicia Vikander, however, steals the whole movie away from him, bringing an intense personality to each and every moment, digging into every subtle moment with fierce emotional awareness. She takes tough moments of vulnerability (tough because they aren't always fleshed out well by the dialogue) and makes them profoundly real. Her nuances I would compare to Felicity Jones's in The Theory of Everything in how well she reacts to her leading man. And yet, from her first appearance to the final shot of her over a bluff, she is in many ways the beating heart of the movie. It is her presence, and hers alone, that makes the film a romance, and it is only in her scenes that I ever felt tears come to my eyes. Strange that a movie about a trans woman actually finds its strength in a supporting cis woman.
What else? The production design is everything. Beautiful costumes, intricate details in the sets and props, the makeup and hair. It's gorgeous. Matthias Schoenaerts and Ben Whishaw pop in for a few lovely scenes, though I might have wished for more Whishaw. The score is, on the other hand, pretty underwhelming. I'm usually a staunch fan of composer Alexandre Desplat, but for some reason his string-heavy work here felt recycled and unbalanced. Let's just finish by saying the film got the Oscar nominations it deserved. No more, no less.
IMDb: The Danish Girl
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