Film Review: 'The Danish Girl'

For Christmas I received some cinema vouchers, so this afternoon, on this horrible wet day,  a friend and I went an saw a film we'd both heard of called 'The Danish Girl', which came into cinemas on New Years Day.


Brief Summary: The film is based on the true story of a young male artist who realises that he is transgender and believes himself to be a women trapped in the wrong body. The film outlines his struggles and he goes on to become the first to attempt surgery in order to fully change gender.

I thought the film was well acted and I was pleasantly surprised that the overarching issue of the struggle of a Transgender man at the time was not forced upon the viewer in a campaigning style, but simply displayed subtly through a moving life story.

The lead roles of Einar Wegner/Lili Elbe and wife Gerda Wegener were played by Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander respectively and both portrayals were, in my opinion, excellent. They were believable and, I guess sensitive. To go off on a tangent slightly (but hopefully get across my point! ) I remember when Joanne Froggat, who played Anna Bates in Downtown Abbey, was awarded an Oscar for her performance in Season 4, when her character ewes raped, and she said that she was honoured to have been trusted with such a storyline and felt a very real responsibility to play it in a manner which would be respecting the hardships faced by many women. I am in no way stating that rape and being transgender share any ball part but I simply mean to indicate that the principle actors, particularly Redmayne, were given parts that came with a heavy responsibility of staying true to reality and I be live they did a very good job. I think this was the first time I have seen something starring Alicia Vikander, but I have liked Eddie Redmayne for a while.

There are only a couple of small 'criticisms', if you can really call them that, which I would make. The first is that I did find the film to be quite slow moving at times. I suppose this was because it was following the journey of one man, and was leading to one place, without any side stories and sub-plot, and didn't have very many main characters. It wasn't a boring film, but did drag at times. The second thing isn't a criticism, and I must be careful in the way I word it because I don't pretend to have much knowledge on the topic and wouldn't wish either to cause offensive or to contradict my previous observation. I suppose it was because the film began in such a way as to join Einar's story at the point at which things began to properly change for him, but, although there was some minor reference and explanation of transgender experiences previously in his life, his decision appeared very sudden. It seemed as though he was one minute pining for physical relations with his wife in order to conceive with er, and the next entirely focused upon finding his true identity. There are many explanations for this, he was trying ti fight his inclinations but was triggered into finally admitting it to himself and from that point couldn't turn back seems the most realistic o me. Therefore I do not criticise the script, I simply wish to note that I could see where some viewers may find confusion or a lack of consistency or even an argument for a hint of unrealistic storyline. I, however, think it worked very well- I mean, if they'd attempted to begin much earlier in his life, this would likely  only have heightened my notion that the film wasn't particularly fast-moving, as it would have taken longer to get to the real message.

Finally, I don't want to include spoilers so I won't talk much about the ending, but all I will say is I didn't expect it, and I always appreciate when a film catches me off guard, because I like to save predictability for cheesy rom coms haha.


Overall, I think this was a good film that has been released at a good time, when the issue it addresses has been in our media, most famously with Caitlyn Jenner as the modern pioneer for transgender rights. Understanding that we're all different and clearly showing that living a lie should never been socially required remains important, and I hope that this film aids that, along with being viewed simply as a great first release of 2016!