Maybe it’s because Einar, the man, embodied everything that Lili was not. For so long Einar had had to swallow down the feelings he had, ignore what was different about himself and pretend that he was Einar, the man. It was obviously a struggle for him to fully realise what he wanted and as a caring individual he wanted to do it without causing too much distress to those he loved.
In becoming Lili he could be everything that he couldn’t be as Einar. Lili was his release. She was a different person both physically and mentally, emotionally and in personality. Perhaps she had to be for his own sake, or that of his wife’s?
I read that when he transitioned to Lili full time, the art was abandoned because that had been something Einar had done.
Perhaps the art was a way to escape for Einar and so when he had transitioned to Lili and got what he wanted, he didn’t have to escape through art anymore?
Besides, the film was a fictionalised portrayal of the real people from a fictional book, so it potentially didn’t show the realities of the whole thing. I also read that Gerda identified as lesbian especially when they moved to Paris and Einar lived as Lili there, so although it may have been a challenge to see the man she had loved turn in to a woman, if she still loved him as a her in lesbian form, there wouldn’t be so much angst. I also read that Gerda and Einar were both homosexuals and that’s why they married; they understood each other and so could both ‘hide’ from the world that perhaps would not accept them yet. However, perhaps with modern labels, Gerda would now be known as pansexual? She loved the person.
It is interesting also to read that some think Einar was a hermaphrodite; in the film it was not explained and focused on about the nosebleeds and the intense cramping Einar experienced every month. Immediately to me it sounded like psychosomatic period pains but then, if indeed he did have one ovary within him, then it wouldn’t have been psychosomatic.
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