seemingly designed as a showcase for the talents of eddie redmayne, the danish girl boasts one very strong performance, although not from eddie redmayne, that is wasted on a film that has many mishandled and very poor elements and ends up becoming a train wreck in the end. this film thinks it knows what it wants to be but has no idea how to achieve it that it plays like a bumbling mess. it misses the vital and important story at the heart of this narrative by filtering it through the point of view of a society that has its prejudices against transsexual individuals. it ends up doing a disservice to the subject of the film and the population of people that it is visually representing. eddie redmayne is an actor that i may just never really understand. his performance here is so hammy, over the top, and played to me as one of the worst performances of the year. the character doesn't feel lived in nor does it feel like he knows what to do with that character. you can see him acting and you can see the effort he does to pull off the different affects that he thinks that would make it more believable when really he is just calling attention to the artifice and artificiality of it at all. he doesn't become the character nor does he sink into the character like he thinks he does. all of his performances feel that way to me and i don't understand any of the hype when it comes to his performances. on the other end of the spectrum, alicia vikander gives a really outstanding and nuanced performance as the wife. the way she navigates and communicates emotion with subtlety, grace, and nuance show a level of acting that stands out as far more impressive than anything else or any of the other performances of the film. she has major talent and utilizes it all in a role that requires some very complex emotion work. she is just an incredible talent and does a lot with what is the main role in this film. and, perhaps, that is the major problem with this film. the narrative and the story should be about lilli. she is the heart and soul of this story and why this story is so compelling. she is an important figure that is relegated to a supporting role to lament the struggles of a character whose struggle is not as compelling nor does it compare to the magnitude of lilli's struggle. this film plays as a tribute to a cisgender woman for putting up with a transgender and supporting her through it all. in doing this, it misses the mark completely and the film feels flat, staid, and restrained in a way that is harmful to the narrative and enjoyment of this film, not to mention committing many different offenses against transgendered people along the way. this could have been a fresh and exciting story about a population that has been neglected for so long and i think the film thinks it is doing just that but it has such a misunderstanding of the whole narrative and story that it never even comes close to achieving it. tom hooper is not the person to direct this film. i would love to see this film in the hands of a transgender filmmaker because this story deserves to be told and it requires the perspective that only a transgender person is able to bring to the film. this is a film that is very clearly shaped by people who do not understand that perspective even in the slightest. and, in that way, it cheats the subject matters of the this film and looses the edge this film requires to feel vital and alive. for a film that is essentially about courage, this film lacks a lot of courage in the way that it treats the material and narrative in such a traditional way. in the end, this film did not have the courage to stand out and be a film that is effective, bold, brilliant, different and interesting. it fails on all of those accounts. and i can't get over how bad eddie redmayne is. alicia vikander really is the only redeeming aspect of this film.