I've
had very mixed feelings toward Tom Hooper's movies so far. I found his
style in "The King's Speech" distracting and flat out hated its
application in "Les Miserables." I didn't mind him so much in "The
Danish Girl," though, where the camera is fairly restrained and
unobtrusive. There's a definite sense of caution here, as the
filmmakers are dealing with a highly sensitive subject: Lili Elbe, one
of the first transgender women to undergo sexual reassignment surgery.
It's
the 1920s in Copenhagen, and landscape artist Einar Wegener (Eddie
Redmayne) is happily married to portrait artist Gerda Wegener (Alicia
Vikander). One day when a model for one of Gerda's paintings is absent,
she recruits Einar to pose in her place in women's stockings. The
episode affects Einar deeply, and he has soon created an entire female
alter ego for himself, Lili. Initially Gerda encourages this, thinking
it's all in fun, and finds Lili to be a wonderful subject for her
paintings. but then Lili goes out in public, again and again, and
begins a secret relationship with a colleague, Henrik
(Ben Whishaw). Soon, Lili no longer wants to be Einar, and Gerda has
to grapple with the loss of her husband. She finds herself drawn to
Einar's old friend Hans Axgil (Matthias Schoenaerts), as Lili searches for a way to more fully become a woman.
There
have been several well-reasoned pieces in circulation that detail why
the portrayal of Lili Elbe in this film is problematic, particularly as
to how Einar and Lili are often treated like they're different people,
and the male gaze is often uncomfortably present. However, what got to
me was how timid the film was, often portraying Lili as a martyr figure,
a romantic notion more than a flesh and blood human being. The
performance didn't help - Eddie Redmayne is visualy striking as Lili,
but the character herself only seems to be able to express melancholic
longing and vulnerability, and is dreadfully passive in her interactions
with men. I found Alicia Vikander far more engaging as strong willed,
ambitious Gerda. She's the POV character, the stronger personality in
the marriage, and ultimately the more relatable, sympathetic figure.
I
found "The Danish Girl" an enjoyable watch mainly for the visuals,
which are lovely. Hooper does his best to reflect Einar and Gerda's
work in their environs, and gets a lot of mileage out of exploring the
artistic community that they belong to. However, I didn't find the
story of Lili Elbe compelling because there is so little to the
character. Most of the film feels like it's Gerda's story, with Lili
only really coming to the fore very late in the story. "The Theory of
Everything" was quite similar, spending so much time on Stephen
Hawking's disabilities and relationship with his wife, it had a hard
time making the case for his scientific genius. While there's no
question that Lili Elbe is a woman, we learn so little about who she is -
her internal world, who she is beyond her desire to change.
And
so we come to Hugh Glass and "The Revenant," which is Alejandro
Gonzales Iñárritu and Emmanuel Lubezki doing Terrence Malick by way of
Andrei Tarkovsky. And after being forced to sit through the endless
slog of this movie, I'm feeling much more charitable toward their last
collaboration, "Birdman." Don't get me wrong. "The Revenant" is
gorgeous, with spectacular cinematography and some admirable, committed
performances from a talented cast. Accounts of what the filmmakers had
to go through to get the film made are highly impressive. However, "The
Revenant" is chiefly a grim, painful exercise in plumbing the depths of
human misery. And that is just never going to be my thing.
The
year is 1823, and Leonard DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a frontiersman who
guides a party of fur trappers through the wilderness of South Dakota.
Their luck is bad, and they are attacked by a band of Natives searching
for a kidnapped woman. Glass is then mauled by a bear, who leaves him
badly wounded and close to death. Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall
Gleeson), the leader of the group, leaves three men behind with Glass so
that he'll receive a proper burial - youngster Jim Bridger (Will
Poulter), conniving reprobate John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), and Glass's
own teenage, half native son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck). As Glass clings
to life, haunted by visions of his dead wife (Grace Dove), the three men
clash over what to do with him.
Now,
there are many things about "The Revenant" that I like - the strong
depiction of Native American characters, the bleak period setting, and
especially the challenging nature of the filmmaking itself. However,
the concept of DiCaprio fighting the elements and dragging himself back
from the brink of death is a lot more appealing than actually watching
it happen. To put it bluntly, the majority of the movie is DiCaprio
crawling, stumbling, staggering, and lurching though Lubezki's
beautifully shot landscapes to track down the evil Fitzgerald. And
frankly, I'd had enough of that after about an hour and a half, but the
movie runs 156 minutes total. For all the dreamy flashbacks, and all
the reverence of the natural world, Iñárritu is no Malick. He's very
good at capturing a hellish experience, but his work lacks the poetry
and transcendence I needed to fully embrace it.
So points for ambition and some very high highs, but this is not a movie I found easy to appreciate.
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