“Danish Girl”: a liar in a pretty dress
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Danish artist Einar Wegener was married, painted landscapes and, presumably, was happy. One day his wife Gerda , also an artist, asked Einar to pose for her in women's clothes, and this innocent masquerade opened one locked room in the shower of Wegener . What was outside the door made the artist feel like a woman. And after 18 years, he decided on a surgical gender reassignment and became Lili Elbe . This was the first recorded operation of its kind.This story seems to be marked "Screen for" Oscar "". This instruction was followed by director Tom Hooper , who received a golden idol for the biopic "The King's Speech!" in 2011. The film " Girl from Denmark " was filmed not without a claim to another brilliant statuette. Why not? Excellent actors, graceful scenery, a topical topic ... It remains only to reveal it as fully and brilliantly as possible. This is what Hooper did not succeed in.  After the death of Elbe , her diaries and letters were published as a biography " From Man to Woman ", which, in turn, formed the basis of David Ebershoff's 2000 novel " A girl from Denmark ". It was this work that became the basis for the script of the picture of the same name. So it turns out that the tape is based on a book written based on another book. But, in the end, we have before us a feature film, not a documentary. The work of a talented director may not convey all the facts and at the same time carry a deep truth about people and the world in which we live.  Although the topic of transgender people has a lot of potential, it is not widely represented in cinema and literature. A person whose sense of self is contrary to the body given to him by nature is a rare case. But it is these extremes that allow us to think about curious and important things. What does it even mean to be a man or a woman? Can a person become someone else by changing their body? To what extent does physiology determine our personality? And most importantly, where is the line beyond which fantasies and fetishes can become reality and interfere with the life of the one who gave birth to them?There are no such reflections in “ The Danish Girl ”. Eddie Redmayne (Stephen Hawking Universe), approved for the title role after a long search, is playing really well. He is equally convincing in both male and female incarnations. It is not for nothing that the actor, while working on the role, spent two years studying the transgender community and talking with people who nowadays faced the same difficulties as Lili Elbe at the beginning of the last century. Alicia Vikander ("Out of the Car", "Agents of ANKL") also distinguished herself by performing Gerda Wegener . She managed to convey the courage and inner strength of a woman who loses her husband and at the same time continues to support him. But a weak script cannot be pulled out by acting alone.  The very motivation of the protagonist is not clear. We are offered to consider that a single incident in childhood and a woman's outfit awakened a new personality in him, which in a short time completely supplanted Einar . In reality, it took 18 years from the first fitting of stockings to surgery. A long journey led the artist to a crisis and an operation. Lily did not come from nowhere - she is the natural result of the whole life of Wegener . Hooper almost does not show the formation of Elbe , offering to accept its existence on faith. Because of this, it sometimes seems that the hero has a split personality, although in fact Einar chose a new name to erase his past. So sometimes a middle-aged person denies himself young.  The grimaces and poses of Lily in front of the mirror suggest that the artist has come up with some kind of whim. He doesn't seem to understand what it really means to be a woman, mistaking a set of male stereotypes about the behavior and mentality of Eve 's daughters for real femininity. But the idea of the film is that the suffering of Einar did not arise from scratch: he really felt like a woman. So why, despite the talented performer, does his character still look like a well-disguised liar in a pretty dress? It just takes more than banal dialogues and sentimental scenes to embody the story of a person walled up in someone else's body.  The empty plot " Girls from Denmark " is wrapped in a beautiful wrapper of hats, outfits, hairstyles and pictures. No doubt, Hooper was able to convey the bohemian atmosphere of the 20s quite well. In fact, only this atmosphere and acting make the film worthy of attention. A major biographical project with a complex and acute theme received Oscar nominations for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Costumes and Best Production Designer. Neither the direction nor the script of the film was naturally noted. This is because in this case the filmmaker did not have his own vision, which means that it is quite logical that his work also does not have a soul that can always be felt in really strong films. Suffice it to recall the same "Breakfast on Pluto" or "Wong Fu, with gratitude for everything!  There are films that answer difficult questions. There are tapes one step higher - they pose these difficult questions to the viewer. And then there is " A Danish Girl " - a tape that does not make you think and does not give any answers. Only Lily , having taken another pretentious pose, is mysteriously silent and looks at us with her green almond-shaped eyes ... The Topic of Article: “Danish Girl”: a liar in a pretty dress. |
