40/47
Copenhagen 1919: A young factory worker finds herself unemployed and pregnant. She meets Dagmar, who runs an underground adoption agency. A strong bond grows, but her world is shattered when she stumbles upon the shocking truth behind her work.. Denmark’s official submission for the ‘Best International Feature Film’ category at the 97th Academy Awards in 2025. It is the final days of the Great War and Caroline is barely scraping by, working in a factory. She believes she is a widow, as her husband disappeared during the war (even though Denmark was not really involved), but she is not receiving widow’s benefits because he is not registered as dead. There’s a lot going on in the film, and I don’t want to give away any spoilers, so I won’t go into too much detail about the plot, except that the marketing is emphasizing something that isn’t as big a part of the film as one might expect. While that gets a lot of attention in the second half of the film, for me the real value of the film is the sense of reality surrounding Caroline’s story. When was the last time someone in a film tried to convince a potential tenant to take an apartment by telling them they could get running water for two hours a day (from ten to noon, which might not be a big sell since most people would be working during those hours)? When was the era’s rampant drug use depicted so candidly? Even what Dagmar does was relatively common back then, although I’d venture to guess that by this point the trend was on the decline and it didn’t happen as much as it used to. In fact, I might have liked the movie better if the marketing had been different and Dagmar hadn’t been brought up because it created expectations. While Dagmar is a main character, the movie is clearly about Caroline and her struggles. On the other hand, it’s hard to say how I would have felt seeing the name Dagmar Overby on the neck if I didn’t know in advance that this real person was used in the movie. (It should be noted that the movie is inspired by real-life events, not based on them, so they try to keep some distance from the real Dagmar). I feel like some audiences will have a hard time sympathizing with Caroline, as she sometimes seems to make the right decision a little too late. At the same time, there’s not as much time or opportunity for ethics when you’re just trying to survive in a world where the odds are stacked against you. On the other hand, even though we know that the hope she’s given would be worthless in this world, we still understand why she gives in. I like the look of the film. It’s black and white and the entire city looks run down and barely making ends meet. It reminds us of the lack of interest in, or even contempt for, the well-being of the working poor. Have things really changed that much? The time depicted took place over a century ago, but the concept of female bodily autonomy is once again under constant attack. Of course, all art is in some way a mirror of the time in which it was created, but it just seems easier to see the similarities here.
