Tom Hooper’s film The Danish Girl is a beautiful, painterly, and reserved tale. It gently tackles a loose retelling of the first documented person to undergo gender reassignment surgery, Lili Elbe (Einar Wegener). The film is an intimate snapshot of Lili’s life, specifically her life with wife and fellow artist Gerda Wegener, before and during her awareness of gender dysphoria and subsequent gender reassignment. Her relationship with Gerda makes it possible for Lili to be birthed into the world.
By focusing on this relationship, the film explores the lived experience of committing one’s life to another and the ways one is both open and closed off to their partner as they journey into something hard and complicated. While the film is marketed as Lili’s story, it is also very much Gerda’s story, for Lili is too ethereal, introverted, and reserved for the audience to connect with her. Once Einar, chooses to become Lili in a heart-aching solo scene, the film’s focus transfers to Gerda with all her direct and fiery passion. Gerda is driven to fight for Lili even as she fights with her frustration with Lili for transforming their lives so drastically. Lili is both Gerda’s salvation as an artist and heartbreak as a spouse, and the interplay between those two aspects is powerful.
Gerda’s playful openness is the catalyst for Lili to enter the world, and Gerda becomes Lili’s protector as well, believing in her “realness” as so many medical experts and authorities reject Lili. Gerda shares in Lili’s marginalization and other-ization, and she takes on the suspicion that she somehow is also flawed in her personhood for being with someone like Lili and naming it legitimate. And yet Gerda battles on, seeking to help Lili become whole.
To her credit, Gerda, unlike many in her situation, stays committed to her marriage as Einar fades away and Lili’s emerges. This sweet transition for Lili represents a deep loss for Gerda, which is echoed in her cries, “I want to talk to my husband. I need to talk to my husband – Einar. I need to talk to Einar,” but Einar is gone, There is only Lili.
This film offers a way to better understand why people choose to stay with their partner in situations where said partner is no longer able to be fully functional and present. The partner may not have been born into the wrong gendered body. Rather they may have had an accident resulting in the loss of their mental or physical capacities; they may have a mental condition which shifts their brain chemistry; or they may be addicted to something which is altering their personality. Whatever the reason, the relationship is tested. Statically, more than 95% of marriages end when one partner is no longer functional long-term because of a physical or mental issue. It takes a lot of support and strength of character to remain committed in these situations.
The Danish Girl works as a film because of the commitment exemplified by Gerda. That isn’t to say that Lili’s story isn’t important or necessary. It certainly is, but the story that director Tom Hooper has chosen to tell hinges on Gerda’s commitment to Lili. That’s what connects with most audience members. Without her inclusion, this would be a very beautiful and hard to connect to film.
For those who want to better understand the experience of those who are transitioning genders, there are plenty of good films centered on those kinds of characters. Transamerica, starring Felicity Huffman, or the documentary Southern Comfort would be great places to start. The Danish Girl is about the two Danish women, one cis-gender the other trans-gender, and their negotiation of this reality in their relationship and in the world, which did not understand either of them.