27/41
97th Academy Awards 2025
Line of Events
Copenhagen 1919: A young factory worker finds herself unemployed and pregnant. She meets Dagmar, who runs an underground adoption agency. A strong connection grows, but her world is shattered when she discovers the shocking truth behind her work. It’s the final days of the Great War, and Karoline is barely scraping by working in a factory. She believes she’s a widow because her husband disappeared during the war (even though Denmark didn’t actually participate), but she doesn’t receive widow’s benefits because he wasn’t listed as dead.
A lot happens during the film
and I don’t want to give away spoilers, so I won’t go into much more detail about the plot, except that the marketing highlights something that isn’t as important a role in the film as one might expect. While this 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 Karoline’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 whole hours a day (from ten to noon, which might not be much of a selling point, since most people would be working during those hours)? When was the last time drug use from the era so honestly depicted?
While Dagmar is a major character, the film is clearly about Karoline and her struggles
Even what Dagmar does was relatively common back then, although I would hazard a guess that the trend was on the wane at this point and it wasn’t happening as much as it used to. In fact, I might have enjoyed the film more if the marketing had been different and Dagmar hadn’t been brought up, because it created expectations. On the other hand, it’s hard to say how I would have felt seeing the name Dagmar Overby on a door if I hadn’t known beforehand that this real-life person was used in the film. (It should be noted that the film is inspired by real-life events rather than based on them, so it tries to maintain a certain distance from the real Dagmar). I feel like some of the audience will have a hard time sympathizing with Karoline, as she sometimes seems to make the right decision a little too late.
Have things really changed that much?
At the same time, there’s not that 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, while we know that the hope she’s given won’t be in vain 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 seems decrepit and barely holding on. It reminds us of the lack of interest in the welfare or even contempt for the working poor.
The moment described happened 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 made, but it seems easier to see the similarities. Here.