After all the other darkness Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) has to endure in “The Girl with the Needle,” one can’t help but find the black humor in learning the worst awaits her at a candy shop, with all the sweets encased in glass jars downstairs at the home of Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm) some unsavory business above. Karoline shouldn’t know of what Dagmar really does for a living, but at her lowest moment, attempting to rid herself of an unwanted pregnancy, she comes to her rescue at a spa promising that if she carries the baby to term, she’ll find a good home for it. As it turns out, Karoline will need a home for herself as well when she’s no longer welcome at the factory she worked at after hopes that she would be able to parlay a potential child with its owner (Joachim Fjelstrup) as the father into a place in his well-to-do family, a rare lucky break after she was left alone after the carnage of World War I to fend for herself after her husband Peter (Besir Zeciri) is thought to be deceased.
Long before Karoline arrives at Dagmar’s residence to offer herself up as an employee – if nothing else, having the breastmilk to feed the babies that come and go, cinephiles could feel like kids in a candy store upon entering director Magnus von Horn’s phantasmagoria that could easily play alongside the imports of German expressionism at the local cinematheque in Copenhagen at the time it’s set. Coming off the ultra-modern “Sweat,” in which he considered the terror of being beholden to an audience you never see as a social media influencer, von Horn finds what’s old is new again with the resplendent black-and-white drama where Karoline’s desperate straits are horror enough before falling into the clutches of Dagmar Overbye, an infamous real-life woman branded a monster for preying upon young women in need of an abortion to support herself in difficult times.
A dazzling score intermingling classical strings with electronica are only a small indication of the mix of modern sensibilities and foundational craftsmanship at play in the film where Karoline traverses a post-war landscape that resembles a haunted house as what’s left for dead has a way of spring back to life and the pull of the past makes it harder to move through the world. von Horn opens the film with the arresting scene of his cast’s faces fading into one another, a series of portraits that could come to include your own when the film becomes a look at how fragile a society is that lacks compassion for its most vulnerable and in particular has conditioned women to believe they’re second-class citizens. Devastating and invigorating in equal measure, “The Girl with the Needle” turned heads amidst a stacked lineup at Cannes this past May and remains one of the finest films to come out this year, recently named Denmark’s official Oscar entry and now rolling into theaters. Van Horn graciously took the time to talk about how he chose the less obvious approach to dramatizing Overbye’s crimes, how a language barrier actually became a benefit to the production and how he could set the tone for the film with its fantastic introduction.
This is about as far away from “Sweat” as you can get, at least on an aesthetic level. Was that part of the appeal?
Yeah, it was a way after “Sweat” to have a new filmmaking challenge. At the end of a film, I’m always very fed up with doing those images or working [a certain] way. “Sweat” was shot in a very spontaneous and open-minded [way], purposefully not prepared too much to catch that realness and freshness and and after that, there was a dream to be really well prepared again and to create a world that is different from ours. To make work with the element of intention was really something I felt strongly. So when this idea was presented to me, I was very inspired by the sense of “Okay, let’s make a costume drama.” But I didn’t expect that it was as far away as you say from “Sweat” as possible.
When the real-life story of Dagmar Overbye is likely what attracted your interest, how did you come to focus on a character like Karoline? [Spoilers blurred]
We were thinking about how to [tell] this story because when you look at Dagmar and the real crime, it’s impossible not to look at society surrounding her. She was a serial killer, but not in the sense that she kidnapped babies to kill them. Women came to her and gave her children in the naive hope that she would provide foster families for them. That says so much about society surrounding Dagmar and we knew we wanted to make a story with a main character we could engage with and relate to, so one of the mothers that visit Dagmar and leaves her child [with her] was extremely interesting because that’s almost like the relationship society could have to her — first believing her and being charmed by her and then discovering a horrible truth. The journey of that woman is also a journey closer to evil and it raises the question of “Is [Karoline] able to become Dagmar? Is she a doppelganger?” That’s the journey we’re taking on and I believe that’s something much more human and interesting than if it had been a serial killer biopic of Dagmar. That would have been less interesting for my taste and point of view.
Did you feel you could more directly access certain emotions when telling a story in this time? One of the most powerful ideas in the film for me was this idea of generational transference of abuse from one woman to another, which you’re able to communicate by showing slaps between the old and young for discipline, a scene that might not have made it into a modern film.
Yeah, this setting 100 years ago suddenly opens up to so much more interesting scenes that today would not have been possible without passing extreme judgment on them, but setting them in a different time when the world was such a harsh and oppressive place can [lead] to a lot of scenes you can look at differently. The slap is one thing, but also [Karoline] breastfeeding a seven-year-old girl, we’d pass judgment on that today but at the time, why should they? There is a certain logic to “Okay, why not?” which just makes for interesting relationships and [creates] shortcuts for a lot of things. I like [the dramatic possibilities of] this world where you’re getting thrown out [of your house] not in a week’s time but now if you get fired or you lose your boyfriend. All your prospects of your future happen now and that brutality is part of that world. It opens up for very creative storytelling.
I’ve been dying to ask since first seeing the opening sequence, how did you decide that was how you wanted to set up this story with the collection of characters’ faces?
Originally, it was [only] meant for when they reappear in the film or in the ether dream, but then we were shooting them and we were having so much fun. We felt that became so powerful that in editing, it was a great way to open the film. Inspiration was taken from camera experiments used in the beginning of the 20th century of double exposure, but also touching upon [this idea] that these people they go in and out of each other and the separation between them is maybe not so clear. Of course, it introduces elements of horror at an early stage of the film, but I mostly liked [that idea] we’re not completely separated human beings.
Was it exciting to investigate filmmaking techniques from early cinema? I understand you used miniatures as well.
We were using these 30 or 40 [miniatures] that we were shooting and in one way, it was a dream to work in a way inspired by how things were made at the time, but it was also cheaper for us and better to work with VFX [later] in a way [where] instead of designing things in 3D, we would take all these buildings and they would also be scanned, so we could use parts of our miniatures to change buildings that we have shot that look too modern. It was a way of also creating this world which was quite effective and budget-friendly because making these miniatures in Poland was not so expensive. It was great for us to not outsource effects. You never meet the people by the computers really. It’s mostly like, “Oh, we need to change this roof and you never really know what they’re going to do,” but by having these miniatures we could design the change [them in] analog and then send them the scans get it done [while] being in complete control of it, so it’s not only it was effective, but also a dream to work that way.
Another fusion of the past and present is this magnificent score from Frederikke Hoffmeier, which is a combination of traditional instruments and electronica. What was that collaboration like?
I always knew it was going to be a modern score and there was going to be an electronic bass. I mentioned that to Vic Carmen Sonne, who plays Karolina, and she is friends with Frederikke Hoffmeier and she said, “Maybe you should speak to her.” We really got along and when I first listened to her music, it felt crazier than what’s in the film because it’s noise music, but I felt it works in in a great way because it’s like when music breaks and there are scenes in the film that feel like something breaks inside us because it’s horrible. When this music also breaks and loses melody, it’s interesting and then she composed so much music for this film that was both really scary and moving, but it was all based in something very modern that took the film away from its historical context in a way I thought was great.
Knowing that was Vic’s suggestion, what was it like having her as a collaborator beyond her role acting in it?
I cast her maybe two years before we started shooting. It took a long time to finance and finish developing this film, but that meant we had a lot of time to discuss different script drafts and when me and Line [Langebek Knudsen] were writing, Vic would read something whenever we ever felt it was ready and all those discussions were a very good way for us to communicate what we wanted to make and for her to observe the creation on paper of her character and to get very into it. I like to work that way and to engage people at a very early stage. Also, I’m not from Denmark and she [offered] a good introduction to other people [there], like with Frederikke Hoffmeier, but other actresses that I cast and other creatives in Denmark as well.
When Danish isn’t your first language and then you’re filming in Poland, another culture that wasn’t exactly your own, was it interesting having that remove?
I moved from Sweden when I was 21 to Poland to attend the film school, so I learned making films by working in a language I almost didn’t understand and there’s some strength in that. In Sweden, I’m taken expected to be really articulate because it’s my mother tongue, but in the other languages people give me a lot of slack. I can express myself a bit clumsily and I can somehow express my thoughts quicker on set, so I feel working in a language in Danish where I speak English or in Swedish, but they answer in Danish, it’s not a handicap. This actually opens up for a different discussion in the same way so many people who worked on the film that is supposed to depict Copenhagen are Polish. Almost everyone behind the camera is Polish and it gives us a creative and healthy arrogance because we’re not so connected to this society we’re portraying, so we look at it differently. That’s also a creative weapon and a strength.
You won’t say it, but I know this was this hugely ambitious production that you pulled off here. What’s it like moving forward knowing that you could do something like this?
I’m very proud because our ambitions were super high and we managed to create this credible world for these characters to exist in. I’m really proud of that — and also exhausted — but it’s completely a team effort and it’s not the first time I worked with most of them behind the camera, but that’s exactly what I need because without them, it wouldn’t have been possible. A lot of what has been created on screen is based in friendship and without that, we wouldn’t have pulled off what we did.
“The Girl with the Needle” opens on December 6th at in New York at the IFC Center and Los Angeles at the Laemmle Royal, December 20th at the SBIFF Film Center in Santa Barbara and the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, December 27th at the Plaza Theatre in Atlanta, and January 10th at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque and the Gateway Film Center in Columbus, Ohio.