We’re at a precarious point in time right now. The world over, it feels as though several things that have been building for years upon years under the skin of society are coming to a head, for better or worse. Naturally, then, we’re seeing an uptick in art that grapples with the darker side of humanity and desperation.
THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE is the newest journey into this realm of shadows, and what a look into a gaping maw of darkness it is. Magnus von Horn’s newest is an unrelentingly bleak tale of a woman on the edge of need, cast aside by much of society even as she tries to carve an independent space for herself within it. Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) is a factory worker in post-WWI Copenhagen. She lives in and is surrounded by poverty. Every step she seems to make to advance herself is just as quickly squandered and snuffed out.
Her husband Peter (Besir Zeciri), a war veteran she has long thought dead, turns up out of the blue. Disfigured from the war, he wears a mask that covers half his face and constantly apologizes for the sounds of his eating. Nevertheless, he wants to rebuild a life with her—even when he finds out she’s pregnant with another man’s child. She, angry that he left her to think him dead and barely able to support even herself on her meager salary, decides it is better to give up the child than try to raise it. In her darkest, most desperate moment, she meets Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), who tells her there is a way to ensure the child is well taken care of. Dagmar insists many women and families with more children than they are able to support use her services of connection, for a small fee.
From its opening moments, THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE is both nightmarish and beautiful. Every moment pangs with the ache of clawing your way through the dust of the world to scrape together some semblance of a stable life. Beautifully lit and shot in stark black and white, hauntingly composed by Frederikke Hoffmeier, GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE dances the fine line between reality and fairy tale. There are monsters all over, and yet the biggest one of all is more complex and pervasive, and all too familiar.
How do you decide between choices that feel equally monstrous? How do you live in a world so enwrapped in death? There are several moments where GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE puts a finer point on the disparity between men and women at even the roughest of times. Peter, though he is brutally marked by the war, appears to have a much more stable life than Karoline. Employed by a traveling freak show, he seems to be making consistent money, living in community while Karoline is constantly isolated and jobless. His job? Confronting the audience with “what the war spit out”. It is impossible to get too deep into his plotline without spoiling this harrowing yet beautiful tale, but there is something to be said for the way we respond when confronted with horrors so human-made as war.
The effects of the war echo across this landscape in every stifled, smothered scream of poverty, and yet we still make time to jeer at what it creates. We are always looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, even if that light is nothing more than comparing ourselves to those we consider to be worse off than us.
That a scenario like the one painted in GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE was ever even close to real—and could just as well be so again—is almost inconceivable. And yet. We stand again at the edge of such desperation.
At its core and even in its monstrous moments, there is a throughline in GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE of needing to remain connected to something in order to maintain hope. Losing too much of a grip on what makes us human—folding under the weight of isolation—costs us everything. Even in the darkest, most horrifying times, we cannot lose hope for the future.
THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE is now playing in theaters and on MUBI.
Tags: Besir Zeciri, Fairy Tales, Frederikke Hoffmeier, Line Langebek, Magnus von Horn, Mubi, Oskar Skriver, The Girl With the Needle, Trine Dyrholm, Vic Carmen Sonne
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