When it comes to this year's awards season, is this movie too big to fail?
You're watching Beyond The Trailer's review of The Danish Girl...
The legend of The Danish Girl began to emerge during last year's awards season, when buzz
began to circulate that voters would give the Best Actor prize to Michael Keaton over
Eddie Redmayne because Redmayne was assured a win the following year with...The Danish
Girl. Now of course, we all know how that turned out - that even with this other performance
on the horizon voters still couldn't resist giving the top prize to Redmayne for his portrayal
of Stephen Hawking. But that only added to the growing legend of The Danish Girl, as
everyone began to wonder if this meant Redmayne would now win twice in a row. I compared him
to Daniel Day Lewis, another transformative actor who won his first Oscar at just thirty-three,
and I wasn't the only one. And then the legend of The Danish Girl got another boost with
the unveiling of Caitlyn Jenner, who suddenly thrust the transgender issue into the mainstream
- and seemingly into acceptance, or at least acceptance of the conversation. Finally to
top it all of, the only other transgender film of the year, Ray, got sidelined due to
bad reviews and bad press. Then add to all that buzz Alicia Vikander, coming off of very
strong buzz herself for Ex Machina, and director Tom Hopper whose The King's Speech and Les
Miserables were awards juggernauts. Well, actually, while Les Mis got a slew of nominations
it was a little light on the wins, and now some are beginning to worry that the same
fate might befall The Danish Girl. Whaaat?! Well, here's how the leged of The Danish Girl
has already begun to tarnish. First, while everyone was very excited to meet Caitlyn
Jenner, it turns out they don't particularly like her - which is something South Park itself
pointed out. Jenner went on Ellen and said she still believes marriage should only be
between a man and a woman, and oh yeah, she seems to be responsible for a car crash that
killed someone. And while the ratings for her E series started out strong, they've since
wained. Then ironically, with so much attention on the transgender community already, they've
begun to care about the QUALITY of that attention - and many have called out The Danish Girl
for actually being the story of Vikander's character rather than Redmayne's. Now to be
fair, New York magazine recently pointed out that the wives of transgender patients, who
are basically asked to leave their husbands or become lesbians, aren't gettng any attention
or support. But when we're talking about one of the FIRST transgender patients, that doesn't
seem like an appropriate time to turn our attention to the wife. Maybe you make that
movie a few years down the line. But even with its own identity crisis as a movie,
is The Danish Girl simply too big to fail...?