The Shadow in My Eye

A Danish film set in Copenhagen. The year is 1945. The country is occupied and the war is nearly over. Gestapo headquarters is in the Shell building. Danish resistance members are held as hostages on the upper floors; the building cannot be bombed for that reason. The resistance wants it anyway. The records are there and they have to be destroyed. The Royal Air Force plans a low-level operation. From there the film runs several lines at once. A sister, a child, a nun, a priest and a Danish collaborator. One of the children does not speak. He witnessed a shooting and has had no voice since. The British pilots are inside the narrative too. Preparation before the flight, maps, low-altitude rehearsal. The operation begins on 21 March 1945. One aircraft strikes a mast and comes down in the city. The aircraft behind take the fire on the ground for the target and bomb it. That place is a school. Institut Jeanne d'Arc; more than a hundred people died and most of them were children. What the narrative is interested in is not heroism but error: all its weight comes from an operation carried out for the right reason by well-trained people producing the worst possible outcome. The bombing scene is held long. The narrative stays in the shelter and does not go outside. The collaborator's line says something separate. He is remorseful, and the film shows that remorse brings nothing back. The production builds the real event along with its calendar; the operation was called Carthage. The film was nominated for best film and best original screenplay at the Robert Awards. Bertram Bisgaard Enevoldsen, Ester Birch, Ella Nilsson, Alex Høgh Andersen and Fanny Bornedal are in the cast. Ole Bornedal wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes films about the civilian side of war and Danish cinema. Who it is not for: anyone with a low tolerance; its last half hour proceeds through children and softens nothing.