Danish Oscar Nominee With 92% on RT Is the Most Depressing Drama of Recent Years
It's an (almost) hopeless story that will touch your heart.
Many of the films in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival were expected to be nominated in the Best Foreign Film category.
Jacques Audiard's scandalous Emilia Perez and the much more worthy nominee Magnus von Horn's The Girl with the Needle made the shortlist.
What Is The Girl with the Needle About?
The First World War is halfway through, which Karoline can only guess at: a garment factory worker in Copenhagen believes that her disastrous situation can be corrected by an unequal marriage to the owner of a weaving mill.
Jorgen is reluctant to talk about a future together, but he confidently lifts the hem of her dress. When the pregnancy is already difficult to hide, the Baron's mother closes the doors to both the family and the factory for Karoline.
She decides that there is only one way out – an abortion. Bleeding on the tiles of a public bath, Karoline is taken in by the polite lady Dagmar. The abortion is not completed, and the new acquaintance promises to find a home for the unborn child.
The Girl With the Needle Immerses the Viewer in Its Dark and Oppressive Atmosphere
Magnus von Horn seems to plunge the viewer to the bottom of the ocean. Historical distance and black and white serve as imaginary armor – we watch the movie from a seemingly safe distance.
At the same time, the deeper we go, the more pressure we feel, and nothing can stop the goosebumps on our skin and the pulsating sound design in our ears.
The camera follows the fearless Vic Carmen Sonne – at times it seems that we see the back of the actress' head almost more often than her devastated eyes and her hands twisted by misery.
Denmark remained neutral during the war, but non-intervention did not save it from unemployment and grief at the front and in the city – the husband Karoline thought was dead will return with a severely mutilated face.
The screenplay is based on a true story, but it is better to read the real story after watching the film.
The Girl With the Needle Is a Drama That Pays a Lot of Attention to Detail
Far more important than von Horn is not interested in crime itself but in the conditions that led to it: drafts in rented rooms, empty buckets in the corners, the cries of newborn children who have nothing to eat.
Poverty is a friend of hopelessness, which Karoline resists even when she has no strength left to stand up.