Orchestrated Identity: A Review of Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl (2015)

By Ami Melville

Loosely based on the lives of 20th century Danish painters Lili Ilse Elvenes (formally Einar Wegener) and Gerda Gottlieb, The Danish Girl (starring Eddie Redmayne as Lili and Alicia Vikander as Gerda) attempts to convey Elvenes’ transitioning from a man to a woman through the guise of aesthetics while simultaneously portraying the complex views of the people around her. Although the film incorporates various artistic elements from the couples’ lives, such as their dynamic careers as illustrators and reimagining 1920s Copenhagen through aesthetic views of their environment, it fails to capture Lili’s emotional transition and intimately connect with her feelings about her identity. The glamorous set and explicit dedication to every shot casts a shadow over her internal dialogue, which puts the primary subject matter of the film at a distance from the audience in favor of a stylized production.

Regarding Redmayne’s performance, he successfully shows the viewer differentiating physical mannerisms between Einar and Lili. Einar’s confident stance in the beginning contrasts with Lili’s delicate movements that develop as she discovers her female identity. However, there is a significant lack of recognition of her internal struggle and articulating a transgender narrative from all angles. The film leaves much of her feelings up to interpretation by the audience, evident mainly through her physical movements when posing for Gerda’s paintings, when it should clearly convey her narrative without ambiguity. It feels replaced by a focus on each scene’s aesthetic ornamentation, as well as careful orchestration of Lili’s story that is sped up and shortened to maintain cinematic drama. Casting a cisgender man as a transgender woman already established this disconnect between Lili’s dialogue and the audience prior to the film’s release. This film would surpass the surface it skims by instead casting a transgender actor who has undergone (or is undergoing) transitioning like Lili had done, bringing authenticity to her character and effectively connecting with the viewer through this. 

Additionally, the storyline the movie follows does not depict her lifelong conflict with identity, nor does it accurately portray many events from Lili’s life, such as the nature of her marriage to Gottlieb and the surgical procedures she underwent. In fact, the screenplay is based on the novel The Danish Girl (2000) by David Ebershoff, which is a fictionalized account of Lili and Gerda’s lives that adds new characters and events to their story (that are included in the film as well). While Ebershoff’s novel is explicitly fictional, the film is advertised as being “Inspired by the extraordinary true story” in the trailer. Furthermore, the film is classified as “biographical” on many websites. This misleads the audience, as it is actually based on a fictional story about the couple. These historical inaccuracies weaken the film’s narrative value. 

Furthermore, the film disregards the true events of Lili’s and Gerda’s lives after Lili’s transitioning. It erases Gottlieb’s lesbian sexuality in favor of depicting her as heterosexual and having a relationship with Ebershoff’s fictional character Hans Axgil. Additionally, it simplifies the complex surgeries Lili underwent as well as her death. In the movie, Lili dies after her second sex reassignment procedure; however, the real Lili died from uterine transplant complications, which was her fifth surgery. While biographical films cannot depict every scene from a person’s life, shortening important events or falsifying details adds up and eventually breaks the narrative’s impact apart.  

The Danish Girl aims to portray a true story about Lili Elvenes’ experience with transitioning and discovering her identity, but ultimately falls short due to its multiple inaccuracies and overly stylized production that eclipse Lili’s internal struggle. While this should shine through the screenplay as her individual and intimate narrative, the film leaves much of her story up to the audience’s interpretation. The focus on making this movie beautiful and alluring is evident, but Lili’s explicit monologue is not. Her life would be more effectively documented in a longer production, such as a documentary with several episodes, in order to accurately depict the complex emotions and important details of Lili Elvenes’ life.