Beforehand, one had jokingly called it such things as The Danish Whirl…

This is a review of The Danish Girl (2015)

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21 January (addition to first end-note, 25 January)

This is a review of The Danish Girl (2015)

For my fellow film-goer, Karen Goddard

One has blogged elsewhere [in a review of Qu’Allah bénisse la France ! (May Allah bless France !) (2014)] about when in films, if at all, the title proves to show its relevance – with the classic example of that of Frances Ha (2012), which leaves it to the very last moment, when we are no longer bothered about it (whereas that of Mistress America (2015), another collaboration between Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, is explained fairly swiftly, yet not so as to be out of the way, but giving connotations to the unfolding film).

Here, there is, on the face of what we are told, no good reason why this film is called The Danish Girl¹. (Possibly, as with The English Patient (1996), we are in doubt whether the nationality or the noun is the word to stress, but, in the latter case, one not only argues that the word ‘Patient’ is the more important one (in need of a slight accent), but also points out that Count Laszlo de Almásy (Ralph Fiennes) is not English (though taken for it now, when it matters least to him, because of what he lost on account of patently not passing for English²).)

Really, if we do not search out more about the film and its subject beforehand, the title tells us no more than the film’s publicity visuals, because we know from the start that the central married couple (Gerda Wegener (née Gottlieb) (Alicia Vikander) and her husband Einar (Eddie Redmayne)) live in Copenhagen, and we gather that they are Danish. The film’s one caption locates us, in Denmark, in 1926 : with a story such as this one, one can on one level understand wishing to be light on demarcating the effluxion of time³ (albeit telling not what one might imagine, for its time, to be fantasy⁴), and where there appeared to be layers of reality subtly in operation :

(1) The opening shots of the natural world chose to disappoint a little, by eschewing being strikingly cinematographic (for truly gorgeous shots of that kind can just wow one, e.g. giving the eye treats in The Hunter (2011) [distinguished from other films in that year as IV in IMDb’s listing (@IMDb)]), but in that way setting up memories for the other end of the film.

(2) Principally with the visual treatment of Copenhagen, the feel of what the external world of that period must have been like, reminiscent, say, of that of Babette’s Feast (1987) (or, probably also, Fanny and Alexander (1982)) and Buddenbrooks (2008)⁵.

(3) Finally (though not to say that there might not have been other gradations of depiction at play), and again principally in the home interiors in Copenhagen, where Einar and Gerda are co-conspirators in a game that develops in its own way, without them, and defying them [when Gerda says, of the game, This is not how it goes, one is reminded not a little of Agent Smith’s puzzlement in the key scene at the end of Matrix Revolutions (2003)] – the way in which we telescope in and out of the space in and between the rooms, almost as if, suggestive of undreamt possibility, volume, space and the world itself are flexible, malleable.

It is on the last of these levels, though, that we cinematically veer between the banal handling of cross-dressing of Hugo Weaving’s character in The Dressmaker (2015) [even if, as Lili Elbe appears to have claimed, some may truly be drawn to something that they first come to experience for wholly other reasons ? (whereas, if Gerda does then need a model, she seems to manage perfectly well to produce several finished works of Lili without one)], and the more enigmatic challenges and mysteries of Eyes Wide Shut (1999) (Stanley Kubrick, interpreting Arthur Schnitzler’s work Traumnovelle from 1926, the year in which The Danish Girl begins).

As mentioned⁴, despite the fact that the film concerns two artists, it is almost deliberately divorced from its milieu in art, literature, and music (in 1922 (before the film starts), Ulysses and ‘The Waste Land’ had both been published) - with the only variety of opinion and experiment that is shown, in telling short consultations, being in the spheres of medicine, psychiatry and psychoanalysis. (In a visit to the library, we even touch upon referencing Philadelphia (1993), or Lorenzo’s Oil (1992).)


Whether that artificial limitation is effective must be a matter for the individual, and what he or she knows (or is prepared to forget) about that period. That said, and also as referred to³, the crux of the film’s success for a viewer may depend on whether he or she knows that there is basis in fact (even if it has been changed) for what we see in terms of what happens to Lili Elbe, and how we might relate that to experiences shown in a modern film such as 52 Tuesdays (2013). (From the psychological point of view, also, we seem dangerously close to invoking the diagnosis – more respected in the States than in the UK – of multiple personality disorder, beloved of Psycho (1960), not to mention Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but perhaps never better deployed, as a narrative tool, than with Kevin Spacey in K-PAX (2001) ?)

As with Cumberbatch / The Imitation Game, Redmayne (as Einar) seems given the character of a schoolboy to Vikander's much livelier vibrancy.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 28, 2016

End-notes

¹ At one point, at best, Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander) is calling on Hans Axgil (Matthias Schoenaerts), and he ends the telephone call that is occupying him by saying that a Danish girl (woman ?) is waiting to see him (presumably, because he is not Danish). Gerda then swiftly acquaints him with her being the wife of Einar, a childhood friend. However or where exactly (Norway ?) Hans and Einar knew each other (and whether, as it seems, Hans is German), it is actually immaterial to what happens whether Einar was also Danish (as is the case).

It is now seen, in a review by a colleague at TAKE ONE (@TakeOneCinema), that David Ebershoff published a novel of this name in 2000 - though it remains unclear whether it and / or history are the film's basis.

² In transgender terms, what one does, or does not, pass for also seems to be highly relevant.

³ That said, the pitfall was that there were moments when one was caught by aspects of the seamlessness, and unhelpfully wrong-footed, supposing Oh, they must be back from Paris, then, only to realize that the person to whom Einar or Gerda is talking, thought to be in Denmark, is now in France, too... Maybe that was, in a film that was fairly sparing with overt challenges to mainstream cinematic conventions, not a useful feature, when simple use of establishing dialogue could have avoided the confusion ?

⁴ * Spoilers * If one had not read the words, on the publicity shot, Inspired by the extraordinary true story, the brief closing captions (white on black) do serve to bring around one’s notions of what the film depicts, and why it did so, and so confounding one’s beliefs as to what was medically possible when it is set (though the level of medical misunderstanding, and the barbarities that resulted from it, surprise less).

An article in The Daily Telegraph, from 8 December 2015, purports to talk about the question of the film’s rootedness in fact. Of course, having one’s assumptions challenged may be no bad thing, but, without wishing to say that The Danish Girl drags as such, the running-time of 120 minutes to get to that point is not a trim one, and it seems not unlikely both that it would fail to benefit from being at around 100 minutes, or that the reduction could only be achieved through unnecessary sacrifices.

⁵ Even if, in European art-historical terms alone, we had also seen Der Blaue Reiter, Cubism and Dada, and, to name but a few, this was the time of Surrealism, The Bauhaus, Futurism, and with Picasso going in and out of his ‘Blue Period’, let alone (as evidenced above) Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy. But the film perhaps wisely keeps the art of Einar and Gerda (and what else we see) rather neutral and unadventurous (although, as shown in The Daily Telegraph, Gerda painted in Art Deco style) – just as, without intending disrespect to Alexandre Desplat (in a film in which much skilful use is made of silence), the score is of a fairly predictable nature (compared with what he has composed, for example, for Wes Anderson's films).


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)