The Danish Girl (M). Director: Tom Hooper. Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander. 120 minutes
As a white, middle-class, straight, cisgendered man, I am conscious of the extent to which the chips of social privilege have been stacked in my favour. As such there are some public conversations that I am patently unqualified to enter. One of these is the sometimes fierce debate that exists between some feminists and some members or supporters of the transgender community.
On one hand, I appreciate the perspective that those who were born biologically female contend with a particular socialisation and set of inequalities with deep historical roots. On the other, the increasing mainstream recognition of and respect for the experiences of transgender people is necessary to the flourishing and wellbeing of this group. Those experiences are theirs to own.
The Danish Girl is the latest in a line of films and series (Transparent, Dallas Buyers Club, Transamerica) that may have contributed to, but more likely simply reflect, the growing mainstream understanding of transgenderism. It is an account of the life of Danish artist Einar Wegener, who in the early 1930s was one of the first people to undergo gender reassignment surgery, to become Lili Elbe.
But whose story is it? Hooper, the director, and Redmayne (Einar/Lili), are white, straight, cisgenedered men. Viewed in the best light, the film is their attempt to engage empathetically with the lived experience of another — one of storytelling's noblest goals. But it also invites being read as the appropriation by the privileged of the experiences of the marginalised, for commercial and critical gain.
One criterion by which we might judge the extent to which it is exploitative is the authenticity and nuance of its portrayal. There are many shades to the central character, as scripted and acted; we see both the pain and the joy of Einar's awakening to his female self, Lili, from her initial stirrings, to attempts to repress her socially and medically, to the physical agony and liberation of the surgery.
On the other hand, there is an undeniable rightness to the objections raised by some members of the transgender community to the casting of a non-transgender person in a transgender role (as there has been previously regarding Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club and Jeffrey Tambor in Transparent). Will this come to be seen in future years as the transgender equivalent to blackface?
In one haunting but telling scene, Einar