The Girl With the Needle

Movie: The Girl With the Needle

Running Time: 2:02

Nominated for: International Feature

How I watched: Amazon

When it had me: Immediately

When it lost me: I fell asleep briefly but got back on track

What systems does it challenge: Patriarchy, lack of health care, industrial revolution, Capitalism

This film had an eerie and beautiful German expressionist-inspried style; stark and uncaring. It drew me in as did the performance of the lead actress, Vic Carmen Donne as Karoline, who has a piercing stare and a barely contained feral quality about her.

The movie is set amid the beginnings of the industrial revolution and modern day capitalism in a time where no one had any protections whatsoever. A widow has a hopeful affair with the factory manager that ends in her pregnant and rejected as a potential wife. She can be discarded, fired, evicted or made to pay for abysmally unhealthy living conditions. We see all of it; it's bleak and not ideal living conditions.

Enter Dagmar, the only helpful or caring soul in the entire landscape who offers to find a home for the baby Karoline cannot care for. They strike up a friendship, work relationship and drug habit and strive to find some happiness doing the worthy work of getting good homes for babies.

Only everything is not what it seems and it turns out they are really living in a hell, as Dagmar claims. It feels timely to take a look at the necessities of labor unions, women's health care, protections for renters and other kinds of oversight. The movie carefully does not blame men; only a few male characters are present are they are powerless, and inconsequential. The issue is an uncaring societal structure and women being denied any and all resources.

Editing, cinematography, production design, costumes are all on point in creating a world that feels far away even as the struggles are so recognizable.

This movie stuck with me. I kept asking myself who was wrong, if anyone. I kept looking from the beginnings of Capitalism to the end stage where we are now and marveling at how little has changed, though it all looks different now. This movie feels weightier and more relevant than all of the other nominees to me.