Production Design in Films

The Danish Girl (2015)

The Danish Girl is 2015 feature film starring the Academy Award winning actors Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander (latter of which won an Oscar for the eponymous film). The much awaited film is based on the book by David Ebershoff depicting the true story of the many struggles in the life of Lili Elbe, one of the firsts’ to go through with sex reassignment surgery. 

Eddie Redmayne gives a phenomenal performance portraying Lili Elbe or Einar Wegner displaying a complete identity overhaul in the skin of brave life like Lilli. The transition and journey forms the heart and soul of the film. Redmayne, teamed with his Les Miserables director Tom Hooper, the movie shows a very touching and intimate introspection.

Other than the acting and direction the production design adds a beautiful stroke of aesthetic depiction in the film. This beautiful and humane depiction of the screenplay grabbed several Oscar Nominations including ‘Production Design’. The production designer, Eve Stewart who also teamed up with Tom Hooper in Les Miserables and King’s Speech gave poignant bend to the film with beautiful landscapes and melancholic views. Alicia Vikander did a marvelous job on portraying the supporting confidante and wife to Einar, Gerda. She throws light upon the struggles of Gerda on losing her best friend and husband yet standing by his side through it all.

The production design made the film poetic yet believable with elements which were aesthetically beautiful with being true to the era. It captured the characters’ soul as an artist and depicted the movie like a painting. The muted shades of 1920s Copenhagen and the studio where the couple live are seen in the paintings.  Stewart wanted to evoke Lilli spiritual journey on screen as depicted in the book.

Eve Stewart visited the Copenhagen block where Lilli and Gerda lived and that’s how she came up with beautiful studio design where most of the film takes place. The studio is most dark corners with one major light source lighting up the whole room in an artistic sense. The studio scattered with paintings and sketches along with blobs and marks of colours looked realistic.

The scenes and set depict the femininity of Lilli with the fabrics, muted pink colours, perfumes, cosmetics especially seen in the departmental store where Einar discovers he is entitled to be a woman. This brings contrast to the dark caged and lonely mood of the paintings Einar painted depicting his life. Later when Gerda takes over there is an explosion of colour in the set and costumes with Lilli coming into full bloom.

The set helped depict the emotions and turmoils of Lilli in every way. The colours look like the strokes on a painting, all in a beautiful canvas like screen.

The makeup and costumes are all beautiful yet historically accurate. The costumes along with the set aids to tell us the mood of the story and the inner struggles of Einar on becoming Lilli.