Such a Pretty Picture
January 12, 2016
The Danish Girl (2016).
D: Tom Hooper. DP: Danny Cohen. W: Lucinda Coxon. Starring: Eddie Redmayne/Alicia Vikander/Matthias Schoenaerts/Ben Wishaw/Amber Heard/Sebastian Koch. (Based on the novel by David Ebershoff)
2015 was certainly the year of high profile transgender projects and media attention. With shows like Amazon’s Transparent and Netflix’s Orange is the New Black winning awards and the birth of Caitlyn Jenner before us on TV, transgender images are abound.
In the 2000s they were mostly relegated to the side lines as TV movies like Girl Like Me or Soldier’s Girl were, but we shouldn’t forget the 2005 film Transamerica starring Felicity Huffman. This saw a woman play the male into female part rather than the opposite, rare are the film that deal with the female to male transformation like 1999 Boys Don’t Cry. This is certainly not a new subject in cinema as the brilliant Lawrence Anyways from Canadian direct Xavier Dolan proved again in 2012, but what is new is its profile. Big budget films that are given award season roll out and (let’s hope) a greater consciousness of what these projects mean to their audience. The Danish Girl is the newest member of this tribe.
Loosely based on the lives of Danish artists Lili Elbe and Gerta Wegener, the film is set in the mid 1920s in Copenhagen where the couple have already been married for six years. You don’t need to know much else, they paint and laugh and Einar (Eddie Redmayne) begins to express his desire to put on his wife’s clothes. His wife Gerta (Alicia Vikander) dresses him up one night as Lili and slowly through the next two hours Einar is abandoned and Lili takes over. Once again so much was revealed in the trailers there is little need to say much else.
Director Tom Hooper, responsible for The King’s Speech and the atrociously long Les Misérables, is at home with beautiful Copenhagen and working with his usual DP, Danny Cohen. Cohen shot the complicated Room (as well as The Program) and allows the landscape and city to really be seen. Yet it is the sort of film where everything is a bit too pretty and too clean. A devastatingly emotional journey for the two leads is enveloped in so much gorgeous costume drama that it starts to feel unreal. As a ballet fan though, the use of the ballet space is a delight, all those tutes strung up in the air.
The emotional center of the film is Vikander’s performance. Her loyalty to her husband and love and understanding of who he turns into traps her and gives Vikander the scenes to shine. Excellent in Ex Machina and Testament of Youth, she is partnered well with Oscar winning Redmayne. He will clearly need a vacation after such physically focused performances in this and Theory of Everything. Redmayne’s tall lithe androgyny makes him a great choice and he carries Lili excellently.
Ultimately, The Danish Girl also suffers because we get so little time with couple before this transformation begins. It’s all too ‘off to the races’ and we can’t catch up. Thankfully Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts does appear as Lili’s childhood friend and gives the couple a third party to weigh in on the drama. A calming powerful presence, Schoenaerts (who was excellent in Far from the Madding Crowd) provides balance through third act. Yet by the end everything is a bit too much and The Danish Girl turns a personal journey into a beautiful cold portrait.
Rebel Hearts
October 19, 2015
Suffragette (2015).
D: Sarah Gavron. DP: Eduard Grau. W: Abi Morgan. Starring: Carey Mulligan/Helena Bonham-Carter/Anne-Marie Duff/Meryl Streep/Ben Wishaw/Brendan Gleeson/Romola Garai/Natalie Press/Adam Michael Dodd.
As award season looms the first of many strong contenders hits theaters. Suffragette bowed at the London Film Festival and enticed domestic violence protesters to lay down on the red carpet and call for greater funding. The cast donning shirts with ‘I’d rather be a rebel, than a slave’ caused outrage back in the US. But here in the UK, as the quote is part of Emmeline Pankhurst famous speech to the British suffragettes, the promotion went unfazed. Perhaps context these days is even more important than ever.
Suffragette follows Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) whose dingy East London life in a launderette has little solace but parenting her young son George. Maud is so down she doesn’t even get an ‘e’ in her name, deprived from her very birth. As her fellow laundress Violet (Anne-Marie Duff) recruits her to join the movement Maud’s home and work lives are threatened as she takes on the cause of women’s right to vote and equal pay. She eventually joins action master Edith (Helena Bonham-Carter) who takes Pankhurst’s (played in one sequence by Meryl Streep) call to rebellion seriously.
Screenwriter Abi Morgan, who wrote the fabulous BBC series, The Hour, along with The Iron Lady and Shame, keeps a tight pace in her work. The film clips along not leaving time to over sentimentalize too much. Domestic violence and work injuries are part of the landscape here, Maud’s upper arms covered with burns never explained or referenced to. This subtle hand from director Sarah Gavron helps Mulligan carry the film with tenderness and restraint. Mulligan’s Maud is fragile, but her clear eyes let the practicality of her world shine through. A nice turn especially when help up to last years Far From the Madding Crowd.
Mulligan is surrounded by the best with Streep swooping in much like Judi Dench did in Shakespeare in Love. Bonham-Carter provides the group determination that helps balance a nice performance by Duff as beaten and baby tired Violet. Natalie Press is no newcomer, but her part here is pivotal. You should see Andrea Arnold’s Oscar winning short Wasp to see what she’s capable of. The men are few here, but Ben Wishaw and Brendan Gleeson provide a cadence of reactions needed against Maud’s cause.
Suffragette is in the middle of a current heated debate about the white washing of feminism in cinema. The lack of any non-white representation in the film is clearly apparent, but yet can every film represent everything or everyone? I am not defending the film’s choices, but nevertheless Suffragette ultimately takes on Maud’s story as someone so close to Emily Wilding Davidson. Surely there were class and racial distinctions within the suffragette movement, but what is to be celebrated is the message. In this scenario I do not think there is a right choice that would appease everyone. Nonetheless the discussion is a fruitful one, no one was talking about this ten years ago. Let’s hope the film’s success is a call to arms.