Hugely Overrated

Rating: 6/10 (1 March 2016)

I was expecting greatness, I must admit, and that's too much of a burden for most films. Director, source material, actors, designer, all looked like a great fit, so I settled down for a great night of cinema, and for the first twenty minutes or so thought I might get it. Every shot seemed like a Dutch painting, which I'm sure were the inspirations, but none of it felt real. And let's be honest a lot of filmmakers base the look on paintings, but you then need to make it breathe and live. This didn't, it just continued to look like nicely composed paintings. But Alicia Vikander was a joy right from the beginning, bringing depth, clarity and humanity to the role.
Unlike Eddie Redmayne who proceeded to play one note for the whole film. He seemed to have decided that if he looks down and then up again through his eyelids he was now a woman. It was a performance of tricks, and lazy tricks really, which were skin deep at best, which is ironic since the whole point of his character is about finding what's beneath the skin. I like some of his performances but I think with this he bit off more than he can chew and the director was not skilled enough to get the performance he needed out of Redmayne.
It's a huge shame as it is a very interesting story; the true one that is. The real story spanned 20 years and when you look at the time-frame of what really happened it all makes much more sense. The film feels rushed, and yet at the same time painfully slow at times, and it just doesn't work trying to squeeze 20 years of story into a couple.
A lot of noise about nothing, is my verdict.