The Danish Girl

I recently watched the movie The Danish Girl by director Tom Hooper, starring Alicia Vikander and Eddie Redmayne. I found it poignant and often almost painful to watch as I could strongly relate to much of the intense emotion expressed throughout. The film is a love story, but not a typical one. (Warning, this is a long post and does contain spoilers.)

The movie, released in 2015, is loosely based on the story of Einar (Redmayne) and Gerda Wegener (Vikander), two Danish painters of the early 20^th Century. I found the synopsis of the plot on IMDB.com  trite and felt it overlooks the most significant elements of the story, framing it as a love triangle involving Gerda, Einar and Einar’s childhood friend. In fact, it is a powerful story of Einar coming to terms with and embracing her true self, whom she names Lili Elbe (also portrayed by Redmayne). This aspect of the plot alone touched me as I watched Lili struggle to emerge and accept herself, particularly within the social and medical constraints of the early 20^th Century. I could understand the internal turmoil Lili feels as she tries to suppress herself and remain within the constraints of her physical body and those imposed by a society that has no acceptance, understanding or willingness to tolerate divergence of this nature. Even she doesn’t understand what she is feeling and wonders if Einar is really a repressed homosexual, until she clearly realizes that she is not. We see Lili visit a series of doctors, trying to obtain medical help with her “problem.” One doctor treats her as a homosexual and tries to “cure” her through doses of radiation(!). When that treatment fails, the doctor orders her locked up for perversion. Another diagnoses her as schizophrenic and wants to lock her up. Finally, a German doctor accepts her declaration that she is, in fact, a woman and needs to be allowed to embrace that. This doctor offers to perform the first publicly documented sex reassignment surgery in 1930, a radical step at the time. The first stage of the operation is successful and allows Lili to live more freely as herself, but complications from the second stage of the operation end up taking her life.

The internal struggle she confronts between accepting herself and trying to remain the husband her wife Gerda loves affected me most deeply, because I know that struggle. The tension in the relationship between Einar/Lili and Gerda forms the central conflict in the plot. Not only does Lili face the choice to be herself or to remain the man her wife knows, Gerda also faces the dilemma of encouraging and allowing Lili to live freely and fully, knowing this will cost her her husband. Both characters vacillate because the depth of their love draws them together, while the desire for authenticity pushes them apart. Vikander and Redmayne both perform splendidly in this regard, with the raw, deep emotion clearly portrayed. I nearly cried when Lili accepts that she must be herself and cannot be the Einar that Gerda wants and needs. I nearly cried again when Gerda affirms to the German doctor that she too recognizes that Lili is, in fact, a woman, and later when she chooses to journey to Germany to be with Lili as she recovers from the surgery that has transformed her physically into the woman she already was. She remains with Lili through the remainder of her life, choosing to reject the temptation to seek her satisfaction as a woman somewhere else. This is powerful love.

Although the film so clearly portrays the challenges of being transgender, not everyone in the transgender community applauded it. Many were upset that the role of Einar/Lili was portrayed by a cisgender male. I understand that concern and would definitely like to see more transgender actors and actresses. However, to say that only someone who is transgender can portray a transgender person well seems too limiting. A good actor or actress enters into the fullness of their character in such a way as to become that person, and I think Redmayne does a remarkable job (as does Vikander, who won an Oscar for her performance). Furthermore, if we say only transgender people should play transgender roles, then others could also say that only cisgender actors and actresses can fill cisgender roles, which would significantly limit the potential roles available to transgender actors/actresses. (Admittedly this is hardly a problem at present.)

I loved the film, which I have tried to make clear already. However, I was disappointed by the connection the film makes between being transgender and having gender reassignment surgery. The film communicates the message that becoming a real woman (or, by extension, a real man) for someone who is transgender requires that one undergo surgical adjustment so that one’s anatomy aligns with cisgender females and males. This perspective limits the definition of transgender far too narrowly. As I have written previously in my post Transgender 101, being transgender is not about one’s physical anatomy. Being transgender is about recognizing (and hopefully in time accepting) that one’s internal alignment doesn’t match the gender assigned at birth based solely on anatomical features. Whether one undergoes surgery to change those features or not does not make one a transgender female or male. One is regardless, simply because that is who one is. I will not become more of a woman by undergoing surgery, nor am I less of one because I choose not to (or for many transgender people, lack the resources to do so.) Gender is not about anatomy. Hence it troubled me when Lili proclaims “I’m a real woman” after her surgery. I would say to her, “You were a real woman from birth. Your anatomy simply now aligns more closely with that.”

I was also disappointed that Lili and Gerda fail to recognize that they can have a full and fulfilling live together in a relationship with a new dynamic. This relates more to my own perception though, because if Gerda and Lili are both heterosexual women, then their sexual interest and orientation will not be toward one another. But it tore me up to see them feeling the tension that they could not remain together in partnership simply because Lili was no longer the Einar of old. The love between them clearly remained strong. Admittedly, in the cultural context of the time a lesbian relationship would have been viewed by society as negatively as a gay one, but the two might have been able to maintain an outward appearance of two women who shared a home together, which is not uncommon in society and which has often been the way in which lesbian women have had to disguise their relationship. After the pain and turmoil of walking through Lili’s transformation together I couldn’t bear the prospect of the two of them separating afterwards.  In this I am decidedly viewing things through the perspective of my own life, in which I wish that things between my ex-spouse and I could have gone differently. Just as it is unfair for me to project my expectations of a relationship on her, so it is unfair for me to project them on Gerda and Lili. But the pain I felt seeing them struggle to find a new dynamic while still holding such deep love for one another was quite real.

As I watched the film, I felt thankful that I live in a time with a greater understanding of what it means to be transgender. I appreciate that the medical profession no longer (as a whole at least) views it as a disorder that must be cured and that someone facing the internal struggle that Lili did can now reach out and find professional counseling and medical help to work through the struggle in a healthy manner. Unfortunately, as a society we still have far to go in terms of understanding and acceptance of transgender people, as evidenced by the renewed surge of legislative proposals that penalize transgender people who live as themselves. We haven’t reverted to the era of forcing transgender people to undergo harmful medical treatment to try to “cure” them of their “problem” and society doesn’t as a rule lock them up as perverts, but the mindset still persists and some seem to want to lead us backwards in this regard.

Because it offers such a poignant portrayal of the struggle transgender people face to embrace themselves, I highly recommend this film. It’s not a perfect story and it shouldn’t be understood as definitive of the transgender experience, but it can give insight into it. This story, just like my story and those of every other transgender person, helps raise understanding, awareness and acceptance and bring society to a place where Lili, and Andrea, don’t face such huge hurdles to become themselves.