It almost looks pre-ordained that Nextflix's India launch coincided with the information and broadcast ministry taking a re-look at the Censor Board to make it, in Arun Jaitley's words, "controversy free". I can't imagine any English general entertainment channel in India showing the Amazon TV show Transparent with its content intact. Thanks to the streaming service I was able to binge watch both the seasons a sunny weekend in Mumbai.
I was equally surprised when I went to watch The Danish Girl at a cinema and saw that none of the nudity, which wasn't gratuitous anyway, was chopped. Even though The Danish Girl and Transparent are set in different eras (the former in Copenhagen of early 1920s and the latter in contemporary Los Angeles), they have a lot in common. Both of them are about a central character who feels trapped in the body of his and wants to undergo sex change, and how the respective loved ones come to terms with that.
Eddie Redmayne's superlative performance in The Danish Girl as Einar Wegener, a landscape painter in the post-World War I Denmark, earned him an Oscar nomination, only a year after winning it for The Theory of Everything. The Tom Hooper directorial vehicle gave the freckle-faced British actor another opportunity to show off his acting muscle. His transformation into a woman, in order to be a muse to his painter wife (Alicia Vikander), is one of the movie's biggest highlights. The lustre of his skin, the gait was all down to a T in Redmayne's character.
Jill Soloway's Transparent is an equally delicate and intricate tale about the Pfefferman family, whose paterfamilias, Morton, realises late in his life that he wants to undergo a sex change operation. The emotional upheaval that his wife and three children go through sets the tone for this deeply layered TV series that took the world by storm. Jeffrey Tambor as Morton (aka Maura) has delivered a performance that any actor would love to give a limb away for. The first season keeps giving glimpses into his secret life of a woman and the trauma that he underwent over the years. The second season focuses on his current situation where his children are slowly accepting him for what he is.
As grim as it might sound, the series is hellishly entertaining with amazing banter between the children (special mention for Gaby Hoffman) and their nearly-separated parents. Soloway's characters are imbued with so many flaws - some charming, some really infuriating - that Tolstoy's famous quip about dysfunctional families comes to the mind. This kitchen-sink drama deserves to be watched by anyone who cares about the human condition.
The Danish Girl is an astute and controlled film about marriage, grief, art and male sexuality. Apart from Redmayne, Vikander's performance too deserves a mention. As a woman who doesn't want to let go of her husband's identity, she keeps toggling between her understanding and dyspeptic selves. Hooper, who looks on a firm footing since his King's Speech days, got his cinematographer, Danny Cohen, give the whole movie a levity of an Edward Hopper painting. The colour pallete, ranging from the houses and the interiors to costumes, makes the movie a visual delight. Also, Alexandre Desplat's stirring music lent the perfect urgency that the proceedings needed.
Both Transparent and The Danish Girl have a sizeable portion dedicated to sex change operation. Neither of them gets aggressively nonsensical and instead deals with the subject as dispassionately as a surgeon's scalpel. Owing to its format, Transparent obviously has a better grip on the subject and the whole transformation of Tambor from Morton to Maura is an organic experience. A search on Google will show you the kind of clothes and make up Tambor wore for his character and which will tell you why he got the Emmy 2015 for best actor in a lead role.
Redmayne's character doesn't have that luxury and the sex change portion looks a tad rushed. But the heady cocktail of ecstasy and agony that he undergoes papers over the cracks, if any. On the Oscar night, when Redymayne would eventually lose to Leonardo DiCaprio, he should take solace from the immutable fact that he was beyond brilliant in The Danish Girl.
I was equally surprised when I went to watch The Danish Girl at a cinema and saw that none of the nudity, which wasn't gratuitous anyway, was chopped. Even though The Danish Girl and Transparent are set in different eras (the former in Copenhagen of early 1920s and the latter in contemporary Los Angeles), they have a lot in common. Both of them are about a central character who feels trapped in the body of his and wants to undergo sex change, and how the respective loved ones come to terms with that.
Eddie Redmayne's superlative performance in The Danish Girl as Einar Wegener, a landscape painter in the post-World War I Denmark, earned him an Oscar nomination, only a year after winning it for The Theory of Everything. The Tom Hooper directorial vehicle gave the freckle-faced British actor another opportunity to show off his acting muscle. His transformation into a woman, in order to be a muse to his painter wife (Alicia Vikander), is one of the movie's biggest highlights. The lustre of his skin, the gait was all down to a T in Redmayne's character.
Jill Soloway's Transparent is an equally delicate and intricate tale about the Pfefferman family, whose paterfamilias, Morton, realises late in his life that he wants to undergo a sex change operation. The emotional upheaval that his wife and three children go through sets the tone for this deeply layered TV series that took the world by storm. Jeffrey Tambor as Morton (aka Maura) has delivered a performance that any actor would love to give a limb away for. The first season keeps giving glimpses into his secret life of a woman and the trauma that he underwent over the years. The second season focuses on his current situation where his children are slowly accepting him for what he is.
As grim as it might sound, the series is hellishly entertaining with amazing banter between the children (special mention for Gaby Hoffman) and their nearly-separated parents. Soloway's characters are imbued with so many flaws - some charming, some really infuriating - that Tolstoy's famous quip about dysfunctional families comes to the mind. This kitchen-sink drama deserves to be watched by anyone who cares about the human condition.
The Danish Girl is an astute and controlled film about marriage, grief, art and male sexuality. Apart from Redmayne, Vikander's performance too deserves a mention. As a woman who doesn't want to let go of her husband's identity, she keeps toggling between her understanding and dyspeptic selves. Hooper, who looks on a firm footing since his King's Speech days, got his cinematographer, Danny Cohen, give the whole movie a levity of an Edward Hopper painting. The colour pallete, ranging from the houses and the interiors to costumes, makes the movie a visual delight. Also, Alexandre Desplat's stirring music lent the perfect urgency that the proceedings needed.
Both Transparent and The Danish Girl have a sizeable portion dedicated to sex change operation. Neither of them gets aggressively nonsensical and instead deals with the subject as dispassionately as a surgeon's scalpel. Owing to its format, Transparent obviously has a better grip on the subject and the whole transformation of Tambor from Morton to Maura is an organic experience. A search on Google will show you the kind of clothes and make up Tambor wore for his character and which will tell you why he got the Emmy 2015 for best actor in a lead role.
Redmayne's character doesn't have that luxury and the sex change portion looks a tad rushed. But the heady cocktail of ecstasy and agony that he undergoes papers over the cracks, if any. On the Oscar night, when Redymayne would eventually lose to Leonardo DiCaprio, he should take solace from the immutable fact that he was beyond brilliant in The Danish Girl.