The Danish Girl.

Tom Hooper’s return to form after the dreadfully disappointing film version of Les Miserables (2012) is a fictionalised retelling of the story of a very brave and courageous human being. Based on David Ebershoff's novel of the same name, The Danish Girl (2015) is the story of Lille Elbe who was credited as one of the first identifiable recipients of sex reassignment surgery.

Lilli Elbe.

Born Einar Magnus Andreas Wagener in Venice, Denmark in 1882 as a male, met his future wife at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and married in 1904. Einar specialised in landscape painting while he wife Gerda illustrated books and fashion magazines. Einar love of dressing as a woman started when he was asked to wear stockings and heels so he could fill in for the ‘legs and feet’ of Gerda's absentee model Anna Larssen. Following this one simple incident he stared dressing, and in time identifying as a woman. He became the beautiful female model featured in his wife's best known paintings and accompanied her to many social functions in Paris where they moved in 1912. It was after this period in 1930 that this transgender pioneer Lilli Elbe went to Germany for what was at that time experimental sex reassignment surgery which would involve four operations over two years.

 

Gerda Wegener's portrait of her husband.

Gerda's self portrait.

The film stars Eddie Redmayne as Einar Wegerer/Lilli Elbe who was nominated for Best Actor in the 2016 Academy Awards and Swedish actress Alicia Vikander as Gerda Wegenar/Gottlieb for which she quite rightly won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Also included in the cast is Ben Whishaw as Claude Lejeune Lilli Elbe's lover, Sebastian Koch as Doctor Kurt Warnekros who performed the ground breaking surgery and Amber Heard as Anna Larssen Gerda's model and friend.

 

Alicia Vikander as Gerda Wegenar. 

There was some criticism for casting a cis actor in the main role but I believe Redmayne pulled it off but there certainly more to the story than was portrayed in Ebershoff’s book. Although it has been opined that Lucinda Coxen's screenplay allows a more truthful reflection of the story it still does not tell the whole story including the fact that Gerda Gottlieb had lesbian lovers leading to some critics accusing the film of being LGBT sanitised. A well-intentioned film that in my opinion does not go far enough.

The Theory of Everything.

Sometimes you don’t really fancy a film, but go and see it anyway and then regret it. This weeks Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club screening was one of these films. But thankfully I did not regret it, in fact it turned out a lot better than I had expected!

 

Pre diagnoses at Cambridge. 

Superbly introduced by Rachel Findlay The Theory of Everything (2014) played to a packed house and was very well received by an attentive audience. Rachel gave us a few pointers and some background to the making of this rather unusual love story, although we all knew the story of Stephan Hawking and how he suffers from a rare early-onset slow-progressing form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis better known as motor neurone disease that has gradually paralysed him over the decades since he was given 2 to 3 years to live in 1963 when it was first diagnosed and, as we are all aware from his recent appearance at the BAFTA’s where the movie won three awards[1] he is currently in his seventies.

 

Jane and Stephan get married in 1965.

This rather moving and emotional film deals with his life through his first wife Jane Wilde (played in what should have been a award winning role by Felicity Jones) who he was married to for thirty years and who gave him three children. The period takes us from the time they first met at Cambridge in 1963 until basically their divorce and his subsequent marriage to Elaine Mason (Maxine Peake). Its based on Jane’s revised memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephan Hawking.  Strangely despite Hawking debilitating disease Eddie Redmayne’s award winning success never lets this character get angry and you also suspect from his remarkable portrayal that Hawking never quite realised the affect that it was having on his nearest and dearest.  

 

Now unable to speak Jane experiments with alternate methods.

Director James March, who you may now from Man on Wire (2008) a documentary film that chronicled French man Philippe Petit’s high wire walk between the Twin Towers of New Yorks Worlds Trade Centre in 1974 or the IRA drama Shadow Dancer in 2011, has made a genuine attempt to show the realities that faced Jane during her thirty year marriage to someone that was unable to do anything for himself for most of the time and the strain of this becomes gradually etched on the face of the actress. Rachel informed us that Redmayne took six months to prepare for the role and the choreographer Alex Reynolds was employed to help develop his uncanny performance. It was made difficult because the star was expected to do as many as three different timespans in just one days shooting.

 

The beginning of the end of the thirty year marriage. 

This is a good-looking film with an obvious attention to detail with Eddie Redmayne actually meeting Hawking midway through the filming who agreed to the use of the actual voice simulator that he used. As I said at the beginning of this ramble sometimes you have got to take a leap of faith and see a movie that your not sure of, sometimes your lucky as in this case, and sometimes your not.

 

Professor Stephan Hawking.

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[1] Outstanding British Film, Best Leading Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.