A Nice Looking Film That Doesn't Really Know What It's About

Rating: 6/10 (9 December 2016)

The Danish Girl is one of the films that immediately comes off as Oscar bait. You have the true, emotional and relevant story that has very good actors that relies on their acting abilities. The Danish Girl, whilst it is Oscar bait, still works as solid movie on it's own. The performances were all really well done with Alicia Vikander winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for it (even though I still think she was better that year in one of my all time favourite films, Ex Machina). The period design looked really nice and had some very good landscaping shots, almost as if it's like the landscapes Einar Wagner paints. The costumes are great with making Eddie Redmayne actually look like a convincing woman. But the story falls a bit flat when it brings up the issues that it's about. The first transgender reassignment operation. The film doesn't portray the transgender-ism as what it is. Someone who thinks or knows they were born the wrong gender and that want to change that. The film represents transgender-ism as a split personality disorder with Einar Wagner constantly referring to Lili Elbe (his female personality) as a completely different person. The film also has a very slow pace which doesn't work for character building or plot movement. The characters feel a bit bland and all the characters that matter apart from the main two don't actually show any signs of personality. The Danish Girl was better then I thought it would be but it still isn't really that good - 6/10