Biologically, we are all made up of male and female genes, but as we mature our bodies take the full turn toward the gender we were born with. “The Danish Girl,” based on David Ebershoff’s 2001 novel set in England a century ago when the real first gender operations took place, shows just how complex this story of crossing over really is in the body of a young man, Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne), who has married his art school sweetheart, Gerda (Alicia Vikander).
One day while Einar stands in as a model for Gerda, pulling sheer stockings over his hairy legs and jamming his feet into ladies’ pumps, the game begins. But soon, the game becomes their lives. As Einar releases his sensual Lilly — the person he believes was always there inside him — she utterly consumes him until Einar no longer exists. Lilly, making an in-depth study of what it is to be a woman, takes us and wife Gerda on a journey through body gesture, male domination, seduction games, even female oppression, when Lilly takes on a job at a department store. The couple realizes they have given birth to an extraordinary creature — beautiful, vulnerable and very troubled.
While Gerda has finally found a subject for her paintings that brings her fortune and fame, Lilly struggles to exist, because she doesn’t really. She (Einar) no longer paints. The fanfare of his wife’s success and the parties they had so looked forward to celebrating together dissipate. The nose-bleeding anxiety attacks increase, the gay bashing, the loss of a place in the world; the new identity they both created is one they cannot handle. Gerda has lost a husband, a man she absolutely and profoundly adored. Lilly has lost everything she was in the past. Threatened by the psychiatric institutions of the times that would institutionalize Lilly, the couple agrees that Einar is not crazy, but that he is in desperate need of help. Finally, Lilly makes a trip to the library to research surgical operations and soon finds an experienced doctor sympathetic to their situation, albeit such an operation has never before been successful. Knowing the risk, with Gerta always at her side, Lilly undergoes what must be the most painful operation, emotionally and physically, to ever occur on the operating table. As Lilly maintains, “God made me this way, but the doctor is curing me of the sickness that was my disguise.”
Because this story is 100 years old, it reveals a history of gender sensibilities while overcoming very real barriers that still exist today. With same-sex marriage being an issue during an election year, this film couldn’t be more right on time.
Biologically, we are all made up of male and female genes, but as we mature our bodies take the full turn toward the gender we were born with. “The Danish Girl,” based on David Ebershoff’s 2001 novel set in England a century ago when the real first gender operations took place, shows just how complex this story of crossing over really is in the body of a young man, Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne), who has married his art school sweetheart, Gerda (Alicia Vikander).
One day while Einar stands in as a model for Gerda, pulling sheer stockings over his hairy legs and jamming his feet into ladies’ pumps, the game begins. But soon, the game becomes their lives. As Einar releases his sensual Lilly — the person he believes was always there inside him — she utterly consumes him until Einar no longer exists. Lilly, making an in-depth study of what it is to be a woman, takes us and wife Gerda on a journey through body gesture, male domination, seduction games, even female oppression, when Lilly takes on a job at a department store. The couple realizes they have given birth to an extraordinary creature — beautiful, vulnerable and very troubled.
While Gerda has finally found a subject for her paintings that brings her fortune and fame, Lilly struggles to exist, because she doesn’t really. She (Einar) no longer paints. The fanfare of his wife’s success and the parties they had so looked forward to celebrating together dissipate. The nose-bleeding anxiety attacks increase, the gay bashing, the loss of a place in the world; the new identity they both created is one they cannot handle. Gerda has lost a husband, a man she absolutely and profoundly adored. Lilly has lost everything she was in the past. Threatened by the psychiatric institutions of the times that would institutionalize Lilly, the couple agrees that Einar is not crazy, but that he is in desperate need of help. Finally, Lilly makes a trip to the library to research surgical operations and soon finds an experienced doctor sympathetic to their situation, albeit such an operation has never before been successful. Knowing the risk, with Gerta always at her side, Lilly undergoes what must be the most painful operation, emotionally and physically, to ever occur on the operating table. As Lilly maintains, “God made me this way, but the doctor is curing me of the sickness that was my disguise.”
Because this story is 100 years old, it reveals a history of gender sensibilities while overcoming very real barriers that still exist today. With same-sex marriage being an issue during an election year, this film couldn’t be more right on time.
