THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE — Magnus von Horn on the dark past...and present

The Oscar-nominated THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE is inspired by the grim, gripping true story of one of Denmark's most infamous criminals.  Director/co-writer Magnus von Horn tells guest host Anna Bogutskaya about recreating the horror of a century ago, and how it might not be all that different than right now.

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Transcript

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This episode includes spoilers and dark themes about harm to children. Listen with care. Tell me a little bit about the genesis of the project. Kind of, how did the film start? I mean, this was something I was approached with by my co-writer, Line Langebek and the producer on the Danish side, Malene Blenkov, because I had told her that I have a desire to make a horror film. And it was a story, you know, that filled me with fear in a way connected to my own kids. The fear of something happening to them and what I would do. And it's something I've had, you know, ever since my first kid was born. And I think I felt even earlier that I need to do something with that. I don't know what to do with that fear, but I would like to do something creatively about it, to use it to something useful. Otherwise, I just end up, you know, alone at night in bed, thinking about it. And that's a dark hole. But I don't think I ever found like, the right kind of vessel for that fear until I read the story of Dagmar Overbye. That is Swedish born director Magnus von Horn. And if making his new movie,<i>The Girl with the Needle</i> helped him sleep at night, it had the opposite effect on me. It's about a woman named Karoline, living in bleak World War One era Copenhagen. She's poor, her husband, Peter, comes home from the war with a disfigured face. And then she has a baby they can't afford to care for. There's just one person who can help. Dagmar, a woman who offers up her services. She takes unwanted babies and says she places them with, "Good people." Like doctors, and lawyers. You're doing the right thing, she tells Karoline. Dagmar whisks away the kid, befriends Karoline. There's just one problem. Dagmar's no angel. In fact, she may be the opposite. Or maybe in a twisted way, both. I'm Rico Gagliano. Welcome back to the MUBI Podcast. MUBI is the streaming service that champions great cinema. On this show we learn the stories behind great cinema. Season eight is in the works. Meanwhile, here's another special episode. It's an interview with Magnus Von Horn about <i>Girl with the Needle</i>. It was just nominated for Best International Film at the Oscars, and it is exclusively on MUBI right now in the US, UK, Canada and around the globe. The movie's based on the true story of one of Denmark's most infamous criminals. Like Magnus said, it's got the elements of a horror movie. So we turn to our favorite guest host, Anna Bogutskaya, to chat with him. And as a UK critic and film programmer whose new book, <i>Feeding the Monster</i>, is all about horror culture, you're going to hear him talk about how Magnus and his crew created the scary world of a century ago, and how it's not all that different from the world right now. First, though, he told Anna why he picked this story to confront his fears. Most people in Denmark know what story this film is inspired by. I don't think anyone outside Denmark knows that story. I think mostly also because it felt like... I really liked that it's a costume drama or it takes place a long time ago. It's not so close at first touch. It's not contemporary. That something in me said that it needs to be a bit further away to channel the personal stuff. Do you approach your films in general in that way, kind of feeling first, because the way you describe wanting to find a project to channel that fear after having your first child, the fear of something happening to them, that's the also the way that I think about horror. A lot of those films really help us channel these really big, difficult, dark emotions. Yeah. I mean, I completely agree. I think the best horror films connect to the dark emotions we have very often to like grief, kind of traumatic experiences or dark sides of our emotions. Right? I've always like the films I've made, have somehow I realized they're always connected to a true crime in a way. My first film was about a teenager who committed murder, who had killed his girlfriend, and reading about it, it just becomes, it became so clear how normal this kid was, or normal in the sense how similar he was to me growing up. And that wakes the fear of, okay, so what's the difference between us? Could that have been me? Could that have been my friends? You know, we're so, we're good at saying that we are good or, you know, distancing us from the bad until it touches us. And that's also fear. That's just the way I kind of work. I don't know why that is, completely. But I also like it can't just be that. That becomes very narcissistic in a way. If you stay too long in just that emotion and it, because it's so much about yourself. But <i>The Girl with the Needle</i> when you okay, there are these horrible crimes, but when you, you know, zoom out a little bit you see an oppressive society a time in history, a reason, you know, that connects to these crimes. And that's what's also really interesting, because it starts very much telling something about us. And can that connect to today? Because that looked like such a horrible society and horrible crimes. And is there a connection between that brutal world 100 years ago and the world today? And for sure, there must be, because otherwise it wouldn't be a point in a way to make the film. I wanted to ask you, actually, about the making of this world, this Copenhagen of over a hundred years ago. The city that we see in the film is absolutely not the image of Copenhagen that we have today. What was important for you in recreating this city of that particular time as this dreary, leaky, really dark world? Well, you know, it's never interesting, or it was never interesting for us to make a historically correct version of what Copenhagen looked like. But it was interesting for us to make an emotionally true version of that. I mean, Copenhagen at the time was like overpopulated, crowded, poor, you know, especially women didn't have any rights when you had the most difficulties would be being a poor woman or being born a poor woman. So I think that was the feeling we wanted to catch. But then the visual version of that should just feel true. It's also such a dark story that we wanted to contrast it. You know, when it's horrible, a horrible place should look aesthetically, sometimes even beautiful. Like I was very much inspired by, let's say<i>Oliver Twist</i> and the world of Dickens. Industrial London or England and a lot of other like, visual references or inspirations that are not at all Copenhagen, but somehow come from a world that for the audience could work. And it's a it's a deeply unkind world, you know, even before we get to Dagmar and we meet her. You couldn't really point to a kind hearted character. Was it important for you to kind of see, for the audience to feel the harshness before we meet the boogey woman of the story? I mean, I think the characters in the world represent the world. They are not like, harsher or more cruel than society around them. And I think the film is also about that. It's like what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Or how can you stop an evil circle? Or how can you be good when the world around you is bad? Or how can you be empathetic when everyone around you is just fighting for themselves, for survival? I think they both go hand in hand, the characters and the world around them. And it's also because since it is a story about, I think, this poor woman working in a factory, who loses her job, loses kind of everything, and tries and still refuses to accept her fate, and she keeps on fighting for getting something of a better life. The story is like, when does she turn bad? When the world around her is so horrible. But it's also, you know, it's a lot of fun because you can, in a way, adjust as a filmmaker and storyteller to come up with all these different characters in such a world, you can exaggerate it. Again, we focus on the story inside. Then we can be very playful with the story outside or the dressing. And then this also opens up to like fairy tales, sagas or stories told to children or witches, beasts and things like this. So that's also something we tapped into to even more underlying the creation of this world. That also becomes a way of enjoying the story in a way. I have two questions kind of about that. So on the one hand, you know, you mentioned at the start that everybody in Denmark would know the story, but maybe people outside of Denmark wouldn't. How-- what was the reaction of people when you started making the film? Kind of, how do people in Denmark feel about the idea of, of a film about Dagmar being made? And the other question being kind of, did you give yourself the same sort of freedom to portray her? I think you know, my super power in this specific case is that I'm not Danish, and that most of the people working on the film behind the camera are not Danish. That gives us, I think of it as this healthy arrogance, and I like that a lot. Also something I worked with before, I grew up in Sweden, I moved to Poland. I told stories, you know, set in Poland, not being Polish. Then I made a film, you know, going back to Sweden after having lived, not having lived there for a long time. And that is maybe sometimes what is required to be able to tell those stories. I'm more surprised why this story has not been made into a film yet, or so far. Or this is the first version, but you know, certain stories are told to everyone and you feel it's very close depending on where you grow up. And it's, you know, surrounding you and it creates a kind of shield around it, or it becomes untouchable or, you know, no one can look at it objectively. But when you hear about it as an outsider, you see all the versions of it that no one else sees. The same goes with also, you know, the the approach to her character and that we feel we don't have to base it on exactly what is known about her. Let's just use it as an inspiration. In the end, people watch films because they like stories. Not to get an historical, you know, lesson. At least that's what I believe. Also, you know, when I think of making this film, I think about making it to the world. I don't think about making it for Denmark or for the Danish audiences. I think if you're Danish, you feel a kind of much bigger responsibility or connection to Danish audiences, of which I have none. I mean, I'm going to Denmark tomorrow for the premiere of the film in Denmark. It will be my first meeting with Danish audiences.- Wow.- I'm really excited about it because that's the only country in the world, or the only audiences that have this special relationship to this story, everyone else, is just... They are shocked when they see at the end that this is based on or inspired by true events. This is what you will know from the get go. Or you know why you go see this film in Denmark. It's part of your culture. And I'm very excited about seeing how they react to the film. We should have done this interview- after the Danish premiere.- Yeah. But I wonder if that impacted the casting at all, especially for one of your lead actresses, Trine Dyrholm because it's such a well established true crime case in Denmark, did you find any resistance from actors in portraying the role? Yeah, I mean, it's-- I started out meeting actresses very early. I have this constant fear that I won't find the actors for my film. So I started casting very, very early and I started meeting actresses in Denmark also to get an idea of what was available or who were there, because I don't know all these... I'm not part of the that community. And I mean, I always liked Trine Dyrholm. I think she's an amazing actress, and I thought that before I met her. But I met some other actresses and I met, like from other actresses some resistance or that they felt that like, like I say to me, I didn't care much like what age Dagmar would be. I knew that, oh, with the relationship to Karoline, the main actress, there should be an age difference. There should be like a mother-daughter thing, because that's an important part of the film. And there should be, in one way, you could read the relationship like that. The true case of Dagmar is that she was 32, I think when she was caught. She could be more or less the same age as Karoline. That didn't go well with the storytelling, I thought. But some of the actresses I met felt that made it impossible for them to act, or they didn't like that. So they were much more connected to, let's say, the truth. Trine, when I met her the first time, she was didn't care about the facts so much, but she felt the script was not ready and she said no the first time I met her. But she was really like a nice meeting because we were having lunch and she was telling me, yeah, the script is not ready. You know, the story is not, let's say, good enough yet. But at the same time as she was doing that, she was playing with a toothpick, like picking her teeth. And there was something mad about her, like, I think she was giving me a peek into what she could do if I got her, but at the same time telling me, you're not getting me. And that was the best possible motivation to go and work more and more on the script to finally, it was like a challenge. Like, I will show you a great version of this script and you will eventually say yes. And that's what she sent me away with. And eventually that became the case, which I'm so happy about. Of course, in the meantime, I also casted Vic Carmen Sonne, who plays Karoline, and she's good friends with Trine, so that helped as well. And how did you work with the both of them? Did you have, because their characters are so different, coming from such different places. How was your approach on set with them? I mean, on set, I think this was a very ambitious project. It's a difficult film to finance in the sense that it's black and white and it's horrible things happen. In that sense it's a difficult film to finance. Now it's, you know, easier because the film has success. But having this kind of script and this kind of idea, you get a certain amount of shooting days and it's difficult to get anymore. So like working on set is not the most to me at least creative process. It's more a process filled with stress and we need to really just get what we have planned, otherwise the film won't come together. I think the creative process very much to me is in the prep, the work done before shooting, especially with Vic, because she was, you know, attached to the film, I think two years before we started shooting. So very, very early we were writing me and Line, Vic like, read everything we wrote. We had a lot of contact, lots of long conversations about who Karoline is. And she also could, you know, witness the story taking shape, her character taking shape. So that's like a long, long rehearsal before we start shooting. And with Trine, it was much less of this contact. I think the most important thing I was able to tell Trine that had an effect on her was I gave her, there was the three references of characters that I felt inspired the character of Dagmar or in my mind, and that was Fagin from from <i>Oliver Twist</i> in the David Lean version. Yeah. Regan in <i>The Exorcist</i>, when the devil speaks through her.- Wow!- And Willem Dafoe in <i>The Lighthouse</i>. And I showed her YouTube clips and she just looked at them and she said, "Yeah, I got it." Okay, great. And I've always been told that, you know, in film school, you're always told like, oh, don't show your actors what they should do. Don't show them references. They should, you know, get it from the inside.- But, you know, whatever works, right?- Truly. Yeah. And she liked that. There was an element of, let's say, comedy or lightness or how to play-- She's fearless as an actress. But the story trick in this film is like, how do we how do we, the audience, together with Karoline, look at Dagmar. And who do we discover? Who do we see? Who do we meet? And who do we end up understanding that she is? That's storytelling. You don't want to give it all away in the beginning. So that's what she plays with. I think it's also tricky because you have to, as an actress playing such a character, you can't judge her. You have to defend her as we defend ourselves. That's probably what is interesting about playing such a character. It's also like kind of morally dubious in a way. Because, you know, if you're just playing someone who is- perfect all the time, that's so dull.- Yeah. And similarly, if you're just playing someone who is just pure evil, whatever that means. Then again, what's the point?- It's just very cardboard, isn't it?- Completely. But I also think it's like the interesting thing is maybe not naming it all because I think at the bottom of our heart or in the conversations we have with ourselves, we are not articulate about who we are. We have a feeling of who we are, but we are not completely, let's say, intellectually very clear about who that is or, you know, to explain it very well. We can feel who we are. And I think that's what what needs to be caught by any actor or actress. It's the feeling of a self and not a complete and clear just understanding. You know, you mentioned a little bit about the shoot of, you know, having to get everything done so that you actually have a film by the end of it all. Was there any particularly challenging scene for you to shoot, either technically or thematically or emotionally? And how did you get it done? I'm trying to think now when you ask that about any scene that was, you know, just simple to shoot. And I'm having trouble coming up with that. So like the I mean, it's difficult in the sense that okay, one, our ambitions were high, but I think any filmmaker's ambitions are high. But the costume aspect and recreating this world and wanting to take the audience on a time travel, and we always said that most of the costume films we see, we don't believe in them. Our inspiration was sometimes was, you know, <i>Schindler's List</i>, like one of the films that really manages to take the audience on a time travel. I think the most difficult things we made were very much about catching that feeling, staging the space with extras or wet downs and smoke and mud. It's also so connected to visual effects like or effects on set shooting Peter's face, Karolina's husband's face. That was very time consuming, which is a different kind of filmmaking from just acting. It needs a lot of other people on set. We also built a lot of miniatures. We created with this one shot with maybe 40 or 50 miniatures on a soundstage that later becomes a shot in the film when we'd like travel over rooftops at night. And we were, you know, really the intention was to be inspired by analogue techniques used in the old world of filmmaking. But that in the end, you know, that takes months, ten seconds on screen. I don't regret it, ever. And when did you, did you have a moment when everything was coming together and you were seeing the final film together? Was there a moment where you felt, ah yes, we got it. That was all worth it. I mean, I get moments like that when I see reactions of people. I would be lying if I said me and myself and the screen having such a moment. I'm not that confident. And I suffer different moments of loss of confidence or trying to regain it. I mean, my process in editing, I rely heavily on the people I work with. I worked with them before in most cases, and I have a lot of trust in them. I mean, I trust them to pull me up or lift me up when I lose let's say belief in the project when I see the first edit for the first time I'm always in pieces. I wonder if this is ever going to become a film. But eventually, you know you have good days and bad days. And finally, Magnus, before I let you go, I wanted to ask you, after the whole script writing process like you mentioned, and making the film and showing it around the world, I wonder if you know, the the audience reactions have also informed the film for you too. Who do you think is the real villain of <i>Girl with the Needle</i>, or do you think there's a villain at all? Well, you know, the villain... that's like the most complicated question because we-- I say, oh, the villain is society or the world we live in, but who is, who is that? I think of, Batman, you know, Gotham City when the city can't battle crime, then Batman has to come to the rescue. Or when something needs to be said about the people and the society, then Joker or some other villain comes to kind of underline or to make a comment. And I think Dagmar is no different in this case. But then it becomes the question like, okay, so but what is society then? And what is the world? What is oppression? Where does it come from? I think also that's the constant question we ask ourselves, like in the world today, where does oppression come from or where does, it if it's from politicians? Well, the politicians want to win an election, and winning an election is also based on getting the people on your side. So it's again like chicken and the egg. I think there are so many important comparisons to be made from the film set, this film set 100 years ago to society today, depending on where you live in the world I live in, like I felt there's a lot of similarities between the discussions I've had with audiences in the US and in Poland when it comes to women's rights, or the lack of rights and the lack of freedom of choice they have in, I mean, in 2020, some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world were introduced to Poland. And it feels like we're moving backwards. And in that sense, when we find similarities between Poland today or let's say, US today, and the situation of women and the lack of having a choice and feeling completely unwanted and being, you know, abused in this way or not being allowed a voice by yourself, then that's scary. That's horror. I think in other societies you find it connects to a national trauma. This was for sure a national trauma of Denmark. I think many countries have national traumas connected to unwanted children or children being abused. In the best versions, we have societies where this film can just be a reminder of where we come from and how far we have gotten. And that's probably the best, the best place to live in, in my opinion, where this film can just be like... a look at the past and not a comment on the present. Magnus von Horn.<i>The Girl with the Needle</i> is haunting but humane, and there is hope in it. It's worth the shivers. It is exclusively on MUBI right now in the US, UK, Canada, Latin America and lots of other countries. Check the show notes of this episode for details on how to watch. And that is the MUBI Podcast for this week. Coming up later this month, we're going to talk about Shakespeare's <i>Hamlet</i> and how filmmakers have always loved messing with it in weird and wonderful ways. Guests include Michael Almereyda, who directed the version back in 2000 starring Ethan Hawke. And we're also going to talk to the filmmakers of <i>Grand Theft Hamlet</i>, the new version staged inside the online video game <i>Grand Theft Auto</i>. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss that. While you're at it, leave us a five star review and let the world know we're great. Meanwhile, let's roll credits. This episode was hosted by Anna Bogutskaya. It was written and edited by me, Rico Gagliano. Ciara McEniff is our producer. Kat Kowalczyk is our assistant producer. Mastering by Stephen Colon. Our theme music was composed by Yuri Suzuki. Thanks this week to Anna and Adrian Zielinski for recording Magnus. The show is executive produced by me along with Efe Çakarel Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca. Finally, to watch the best in cinema, head to MUBI.com to subscribe. Thanks for listening. Hope you're finding some solace at the movies.