\tWhen Polish cinematographer Michal Dymek first read the script for \u201cThe Girl With the Needle\u201d \u2013 the winner of this year\u2019s Camerimage main prize \u2013 he says he could instantly see the scenes in his mind: stark, shadowy images of a decrepit Danish slum, where sweatshop workers during World War I bend over creaking machinery.<\/p>\n
\tHe saw classical onscreen shot compositions framing crumbling, claustrophobic spaces where desperate people are ensnared. <\/p>\n
\t\t\t \t\t\tPopular on Variety\t\t \t \t\t \t \t\u201cIt was amazing, strong \u2013 like the best script I ever read,\u201d says Dymek. He knew instantly that the film had to be in black and white, he says. \u201cI wanted to create a time machine. All we know of that time is from black and white photographs so we had to film that.\u201d \t<\/p>\n
\tOver the two years of prep time, as the production grew into a Danish-Swedish-Polish project, says Dymek, Leica Hugo lenses were decided on to help create the distortions of old glass to remain true to the archival images of early 20th-century life of workers ruled by captains of the Industrial Age.<\/p>\n
\tAnd the dismal settings created would naturally enough give rise to the story of a serial killer who promises relief \u2013 at a cost \u2013 for women who have babies they cannot afford to keep.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThe Girl With the Needle,\u201d scripted by director Magnus von Horn and Line Langebek Knudsen, is based on actual events from one of the darker chapters of modern Danish history and follows textile factory worker Karoline as things spiral into dangers that grow deeper the more she fights fiercely to better her life.<\/p>\n
\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t \t\t\t\t\t\u201cThe Girl With the Needle\u201d \t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Lukasz Bak \t\t \t \t\t\t \tDymek knew from working with von Horn on \u201cSweat,\u201d a 2020 story of obsession and social media mythmaking, that the two would again find a visual language to express ominous forces closing in, he says.<\/p>\n
\tTo capture the bleak, decaying world of Karoline, played with remarkably quiet power by Vic Carmen Sonne, Dymek turned to locations not so far from the Lodz film school where he had studied. There, he knew, unlike what is now clean, streamlined Copenhagen, towns still have \u201ceverything crooked, broken and falling apart,\u201d as the Danish city was a century ago.<\/p>\n
\tFor the dark, smothering interiors of the factory, the tenement where Karoline lives and the rooms above a candy shop where the true nature of evil takes her in, Dymek and van Horn decided on built sets where they could fully control the spaces. \u201cIt needed to be cramped, where people are squeezed and can\u2019t move and there\u2019s no light, no air,\u201d says the cinematographer. \t<\/p>\n
\tFilming with an Arri Mini LF, using a color sensor, would allow them to use filters on black and white imagery to help manipulate skin tones and spectrums of shadows, Dymek says.<\/p>\n
\tThey also wanted that world to feel \u201cunpleasant,\u201d he adds, \u201cand to feel sweat, smoke, steam.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe rhythm of the storytelling would be steady and formal, says Dymek, with static shots and long takes in which actors move through scenes without cuts, paying tribute to Polish New Wave cinema \u2013 but, he adds, they \u201cdidn\u2019t want dogma. So you follow emotion: Cut when it feels like you should cut, hold the shot when it feels like you should hold.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tAnd just as important, he says, \u201callow the actors to lead the camera.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tSonne\u2019s constantly shifting moods as they swing between hope, fear and despair, are captured often with the slightest gesture just visible in a wide shot, accented by sudden shifts in light, at times overexposing during flashes of intense pain, Dymek says.<\/p>\n
\tThe camera, meanwhile, is just as constrained as Karoline\u2019s life, with minimal movements \u2013 often forced to avoid allowing a glimpse of the 21st century to creep into the frame.<\/p>\n
\tThe settings by production designer Jagna Dobesz are remarkably evocative of the time, while making audiences feel viscerally the abject poverty of Karoline \u2013 and also sense the fresh air of her one fleeting chance at vast wealth.<\/p>\n
\tWorking closely with the spaces and the light they contained was an essential part of the work, says Dymek. \u201cAny wall that was white was instantly painted,\u201d he recalls, so that Karoline\u2019s skin tone is invariably the lightest shade in the scene.<\/p>\n
\tTrine Dyrholm as the malevolent Dagmar, based on the notorious Copenhagen serial killer, brings a different, more complex character to bear, says Dymek, and has a more technical approach than Sonne, who embraced improvisation on camera. That allowed the filmmakers to carefully choreograph her movements as her candy shop killer creates her lethal deceptions.<\/p>\n
\tInspired by classics of dark drama, from \u201cSchindler\u2019s List\u201d to \u201cIn Cold Blood\u201d and German expressionism, Dymek and von Horn tried to pay homage to great work that also journeys into places of madness, he says, in creating the psychological horror of \u201cThe Girl With the Needle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tA surreal and sonorous soundscape created by Kim Dalum, Morten Pilegaard and Oskar Skriver, meanwhile, adds a distinct layer of the team\u2019s own making, putting a fresh stamp on established conventions.<\/p>\n
\tReflecting on the shoot now, Dymek says, \u201cI think this film was a tribute to how the masters taught us to think about cinema.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Polish cinematographer Michal Dymek first read the script for \u201cThe Girl With the Needle\u201d \u2013 the winner of this year\u2019s Camerimage main prize \u2013 he says he could instantly see the scenes in his mind: stark, shadowy images of a decrepit Danish slum, where sweatshop workers during World War I bend over creaking machinery. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}