IFFK review | ‘The Girl with the Needle’; the post-war hell on screen revisits Denmark’s chilling serial killing
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‘The Girl with the Needle’ is hell brought onto the screen. In this film, Poland-based Swedish director Magnus von Horn relooks into the 1920’s baby killer case, the most shocking serial killing episode in Denmark’s history. Von Horn does it with ample creative freedom, fictionalising the dark episode from history and leaving much room for rather difficult philosophical enquiries.
In black and white, von Horn narrates the story of Karoline, a tailor woman who gets pregnant out of wedlock and then loses her job and hopes after being ditched by the man who got her pregnant – the owner of the textile company where she works. The return of her husband from the war field with his face all broken makes it all the more complicated. Set in post World War I Copenhagen, the film progresses with a series of disturbing sequences, including a failed attempt by Karoline to destroy her pregnancy, an unwanted burden which adds to her poverty. The film enters another phase with the entry of Dagmar, a woman who runs an illegal adoption agency camouflaged as a candy store. Karoline finds in Dagmar a necessary company to survive, not knowing the trouble she has landed in.
There is hardly anything pleasant in the film as it ploughs through the darker and darker realms of human minds. It poses several philosophical questions, especially with regard to child as an idea. In Karoline, you find a victim of her social circumstances whereas Dagmar comes across as a strange human being with her own sense of morality. “The world is a horrible place. But we need to believe it is not so,” she tells Karoline at one point. She is someone whom society wants killed for what she did, but she believes she should be given a medal.
The Girl with the Needle is an anti-war film at its core with the way it portrays the tragedies a war brings on to a person’s life as well as society as a whole. In Karoline’s husband, van Horn portrays a man who lost his life and identity in war. With his broken and disfigured face, he ends up a showpiece in a circus. Karoline, meanwhile, struggles to survive in her life which becomes a nightmare day by day.
Vic Carmen Sonne delivers the character of Karoline with her impeccable expressions. Trine Dyrholm does an equally excellent act as Dagmar, the complex woman. Michał Dymek’s cinematography, a play with shadows, and Frederikke Hoffmeier’s intense music make this Danish crime drama macabre. In a word, the film is heavy. In two words, too heavy.