The Danish Girl Review - 5 Reasons It's Nothing But Oscar Bait

3. Solid Performances Given No Freedom

Eddie Redmayne is a phenomenal actor, and while that meme of Michael Keaton putting away his speech is pretty moving, it's hard to deny that he deserved his Oscar win for The Theory Of Everything. What was so important there was that James Marsh gave him the space to be Hawking, and not just locked into the love-disability-divorce storyline. This is something Hooper doesn't do, choosing to confine the role to the very basic narrative and thus meaning we never get a sense of character. For what it is Redmayne's performance as Lili is good, but its presentation loses a lot of its deftness. The same is true to a lesser degree to Alicia Vikander as Gerda; she ultimately weathers it better due to having a slightly smaller role, but her wife character is alternatively suffering and caring with no time spent on her motivation to be either. This stems from the simple fact that The Danish Girl is just so obsessed with the basic plot that it can't tell the story properly.