Review: The Danish Girl

Sarah Ustoyev

The Danish Girl is an Academy Award film directed by Tom Hooper and is based off the novel, The Danish Girl, written by David Ebershoff.  The movie features Eddie Redmayne, playing Einar Wegener, and Alicia Vikander, playing Einar’s wife, Gerda Wegener.  This movie is based off an incredibly true story of the first documented gender change in history.  Einar Wegner, was in fact a real person in history who documented his sex change into Lili Elbe in his autobiography, Man into Woman: The First Sex Change.

Set in Copenhagen 1926, The Danish Girl almost accurately depicts Einar Wegner’s story and emphasizes the love story between Einar and Gerda as its main theme.  Einar Wegener and Gerda Wegener were both artists who are living in Denmark in the 1920’s.  At first, Einar is the one who has the most success with art and Gerda plays the typical role of the supporting wife.  The story progresses when Ulla, a model for Gerda’s artwork, asks Gerda to substitute Einar as the model for one of Gerda’s painting.  Gerda put Einar into a women’s clothes and this started off Einar’s initial fancy towards being a woman.  The movie progresses as Einar increasingly starts to act as a woman, wearing women’s undergarments and clothing outside of the modeling, trying on makeup and learning how to act like a girl.  Einar eventually takes up the name Lili Elbe as the female version of himself and increasingly becomes Lili altogether.  Gerda, at first, seems as if she is encouraging Einar’s actions, naively taking his odd appearing’s of Lili as a joke they both share.  Later on, Gerda is disturbed to know Einar’s true intentions and the progression of their love is intensely portrayed in the film.

The movie perfectly incorporates a love story while also highlighting the issues of sexism during the 1920’s which still correlate with the present.  The movie bluntly starts off with a sexist comment towards Gerda, when they are at the viewing of one of her husband’s exhibitions.  A woman comes up to Gerda, knowing Gerda is also an accomplished artist, and says, “Don’t you wish you could paint as well as your husband?”  Later on, however, as Einar turns into a woman and stops painting, Gerda is only then given the chance to step out under the shadow of her husband and become more well-known and accomplished throughout the rest of the movie.  This still stands today, even if a man and woman are in the same line of work it is presumed that the man is more competent in his line of work.  Also, when Einar dressed up as Lili to an event she was hit on by a man who though Einar was an actual woman.  The man then kissed Lili without asking permission and Lili was taken aback.  This is another example where the film showed the difference between how men and women get treated.  Because, Einar is transgender it especially and uniquely shows the evolution of how he gets treated throughout the movie and how it changes when he turns into Lili.  The Danish Girl also, was thoughtfully released in 2015.  In the past decade people have only started to openly bring up sexist and gender issues.  Viewers can relate to this movie now more than ever before because they are living in the age where successful and more frequent sex changes are taking place.  The film brings to light that the idea of becoming transgender isn’t just one that was thought of in the past decade but one that has been seen and attempted covertly throughout history.  Even though the film is set in the 1920s, viewers can connect the movie to the present letting them see the progress and the lack thereof towards sexism and sexuality today.

The picture quality and music in The Danish Girl were as deep and great as the themes of the movie.  The audience gets amazing views of two of Europe’s most gorgeous countries: Denmark and France.  The film features many long shots of Denmark’s beautiful landscape and Paris’s artful city making the movie magical to watch.  The music, composed by Alexander Desplat, beautifully compliments the detailed shots in the movie.  Desplat composed the music to be very mellow and soft with heavy use of string instruments adding to the movies bittersweet emotions.

This movie is highly recommended because it’s a movie that’s “so close yet so far”.  Its historical background is almost forgotten because it relates so closely to the present.  This unique love story and powerful theme is beautifully portrayed in The Danish Girl.  It profiles the hardships of going against the norm and gives the audience an intimate story about the inner workings between making a difficult and life changing choice with oneself.   It ties in romance passionately between Einar, Lili and Gerda all at once making it an intriguing and unpredictable love story.  The Danish Girl is a powerful movie incorporating controversial topics today as well as being a successful love story making it a must-watch.