Why Alicia Vikander did and did not deserve an Academy Award

Tom Hooper's The Danish Girl is a good story told with sensitivity and pathos without ever descending to melodrama and bathos - we truly feel the angst, guilt, shame, and self-doubt that the Danish artist feels - a woman born into the body of a man - and her gradual, difficult, ultimately fatal efforts to emerge into her own life as Lily. Eddie Redmayne does a terrific job with this challenging role - he might have won a best actor had he not cleaned up on that award last year - and alongside him Alicia Vikander does a great job as well playing Gerde, his or her ever-loyal spouse - though they make her a seem a very conventional person when I would guess that she was quite bohemian or avant garde or at least unconventional in some way (as I seem to remember from reading the novel that was the source for the screenplay) - she won an Oscar, but I think that was kind of a rip-off as her role was definitely not a "supporting" actress role but a lead. The movie of course makes us realize how difficult it is for transsexuals today - see that great TV series Transparent for more on that - and how much more difficult it must have been a century ago, with so little medical or public understanding of gender and personality. Lily thrived much better than one would have expected, all things considered - probably helped by being an artist and among artists, rather than among a more conventional set. Hooper does something unusual with the sound editing in this film, though I can't quite figure it out - it seems that other than the (too many) scenes with Alexander Desplat's annoying score driving the emotion all of the scenes w/out score behind are recorded with "live sound," that is, it seems as if we are hearing the actors and sound effects (walking across the room, opening/shutting a door) as if from a stage set - no after-dubbing, not sound effects added in editing or postproduction. I liked that documentary mood a lot and wish there had been even more throughout. This otherwise good film is unfortunately at least 30 minutes too long - dragging to the end at a soporific pace. Better to make your point and move on than drive it home, repeatedly.