{"id":5182,"date":"2016-01-15T07:18:25","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T12:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5182"},"modified":"2016-02-02T07:01:38","modified_gmt":"2016-02-02T12:01:38","slug":"weekend-movie-pick-the-danish-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5182","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Movie Pick: The Danish Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Alicia

Alicia Vikander & Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl<\/p><\/div>\n

You (like me) may have admired Eddie Redmayne in the TV version of Tess of the D\u2019Urbervilles <\/em>(2008), in My Week with Marilyn<\/em> (2011), as Marius in Les Miserables <\/em>2012), and as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything<\/em> (Academy Award, 2014). You still may be surprised at how moving his delicate performance is in The Danish Girl<\/em> (trailer<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I knew vaguely what this movie was about\u2014very \u201cloosely based\u201d on the lives of mid-1920s Danish painters Einar and Gerda Wegener.<\/p>\n

Despite their happy and loving marriage, Einar comes to realize he is a woman in a man\u2019s body. \u201cLili,\u201d as his alter ego is named, is at first a diversion for the pair, then a painful inevitability, and Einar becomes one of the first people to undergo sex-reassignment surgery. Both of them suffer because of Lili\u2019s condition and the strains it places on their love, yet they desperately try to make some kind of relationship work. Yet it\u2019s dangerous to be a pioneer.<\/p>\n

While Redmayne is superb, he\u2019s matched in nuanced expressiveness by Swedish actor Alicia Vikander as Gerda. The delicious Matthias Schoenaerts plays Einar\u2019s childhood friend, Hans, with whom a frantic Gerda reconnects while the couple is in Paris. Ben Whishaw also appears, determined to court the shy Lili, or is it Einar he recognizes and pursues?<\/p>\n

Not much was known about transgender identities in 1925, and the medical practitioners with whom the couple shares its secret propose predictably draconian measures. But the real drama is watching Redmayne transform himself into a female being. Says Nathan Heller\u2019s<\/a> Vogue<\/em> article, \u201cHe is no longer recognizable as a 33-year-old man; suddenly, the flash strikes his face and the transformation is complete.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film, directed by Tom Hooper with a script by English playwright Lucinda Coxon, is based on the 2000 David Ebershoff novel. Due to Coxon\u2019s diligent research, the movie actually contains numerous factual details not in the book. Tim Gray<\/a>\u2019s interview with Coxon for Variety <\/em>reveals that the film is actually closer to what really happened than either the novel or Lili Elbe\u2019s pastiche of a \u201cmemoir,\u201d which was, Coxon told Gray, \u201ca work of many hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 71%; audiences 75%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You (like me) may have admired Eddie Redmayne in the TV version of Tess of the D\u2019Urbervilles (2008), in My Week with Marilyn (2011), as Marius in Les Miserables 2012), and as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (Academy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Weekend Movie Pick: The Danish Girl - Is there anything Eddie Redmayne can't do? Perfect.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[265,366,57,104],"tags":[458,457],"class_list":["post-5182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-drama","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-alicia-vikander","tag-eddie-redmayne"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1lA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5184,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182\/revisions\/5184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}