The Danish Girl

I was really unhappy that this movie has only received the equivalent to a C rating. Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander gave incredible performances. I personally think Alicia Vikander gave a more diverse performance but Eddie Redmayne's performance was an incredible one in the way that he portrayed two people who, in a way, had two completely different personalities. I don't know how accurate this movie is when it comes to Lili Elbe's relationships, but since it is based off a novel 'm assuming most of the main conflict is accurate.

I find it really interesting that the summary of the movie is along the lines of Lili Elbe is the first trans woman to undergo a sex change operation, because that is, what I thought to be, a minor part of the movie. It happens in the last 30 minutes of the movie even though it serves a large purpose in the movie. The majority of the movie is about Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne) discovering his real identity as Lili. The second act is mostly how Gerda (Alicia Vikander) and Lili are coping with their situation. The third act shows how they have accepted their situation and how they are living their lives and then the last little bit of the third act is about Lili having a sex change operation. So because it is such a small part of the movie, it leaves me wondering why that was the whole description of the movie.

Something I really found off-putting about this movie was that it depicted Einar as having a sort of personality disorder, for example, Gerda would come home and find that Lili was "there" instead of of Einar, as if Einar was one person and then sometimes Lili would take over and be there for some time until Einar "came back". The reason I have a problem with this way of depicting a trans person is because it isn't a personality disorder. That human is always that human just with a different gender identity. However, that was the only issue I found with the portrayal of Lili Elbe, and considering the topic, I definitely expected more problematic things to pop up.
I never cease to be impressed with Eddie Redmayne. He was amazing in The Theory of Everything and did such a convincing job at portraying a man with ALS. Similarly, he did an amazing job at capturing the inner struggle of a trans woman in general but also the struggle of being one's true self in 1920's Denmark. The audience could empathize with the immense struggle that Lili's life must have been all through Redmayne's performance. He is such a versatile actor and he performs his parts with the most consistent precision I've seen.

There isn't really much else to say about this movie other than the story was executed really well by all the actors; there wasn't a weak performance in the movie. I think this movie did take advantage of the popularization of trans life by people like Caitlyn Jenner and Lavern Cox, but even so, it is always beneficial to introduce people to something new. This was a story that needed to be told and it was extremely well done.