2020 Winner, Another Round

Another Round

Director: Thomas Vinterberg 

Distributed by: Nordisk Film (Scandinavia); September Film (Netherlands) 

Released: September 2020

Country: Denmark (also, the Netherlands and Sweden)

 

What is youth? A dream. What is love?  The content of the dream.

Another Round starts with the above quote from Kierkegaard, the Danish existentialist philosopher. Kierkegaard taught that there are three stages in life: The child, who seeks pleasure; the adolescent, who begins to seek meaning through ethics, and the adult, who realizes that only by accepting the inexplicable (or religious) can a person be happy, given the absurdity of life.

If you are philosophy major, save it, I realize I don’t really know what I’m talking about. But the
story of Another Round involves four teachers, all guys and great friends, who are beyond the first two stages of life. Of the four, one in particular, Martin (played by the “I’ve seen him somewhere” actor Mads Mikkelsen), has come to a point where he hasn’t been able to make that third stage leap just yet. His History class is so dull that the parents stage a meeting to raise their issues with him. When he looks for solace from his wife, asking her if he is boring, all she can muster is, “You’re not what you used to be when we met.” At dinner with his three friends to celebrate a 40^th birthday, Martin has to be talked down from his bringing-down-the-party moroseness.

But how to cheer him up? Well, look to the

Martin and friends pre-experiment

title. One of the friends brings up a clever little “theory” of Norwegian author Finn Skårderud. The idea is that everyone is born with a blood alcohol content (BAC) level deficiency of about .05. The natural corollary is that if one has a couple of blasts and then maintains that buzz, one will maximize one's potential. Martin is the first to buy in, and the next morning before class takes a good pull off a pint of Smirnoff before teaching. He finds himself connecting with the students, coming up with fun ways for them to learn, getting laughs and enthusiasm for probably the first time in years.

Martin tells the other guys about it and they all decide to make a science project out it, with controls and reporting on findings. They all agree to the rule of no drinking after 8pm or on weekends, and each buys himself a breathalyzer to keep tabs on his BAC (amusingly, the number is shown each time someone measures himself). Of course, the lubrication leads to each teacher turning into Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society: History is exciting again; music class sounds angelic, and the coach helps the Rudy Gerner of the soccer team bend it like Beckham. The experiment is a success! What could go wrong?

Testing the Skarderud theory

I don’t think I need to put in a spoiler alert to tell you that some things do go wrong, quite wrong in fact. But this movie is not really about the evils of drinking, and while there are tragic elements to it, this story is about friendship and love. And in the end, maybe the friends are able to accept the absurdity of life and yet still in some small way, through their love for each other, hold onto their youth, even if it is a dream.

Note: This film is featured on Hulu.

The Title: Druk. "Binge drinking." Certainly the Danish title is more dark than the English one. The Danish title certainly better reflects the overall theme of the movie.

Culture: Another Round reflects the problem of drinking in Denmark. Danes need only be 16 to purchase alcohol and teens age 15-17 are the heaviest drinkers in Europe in that age range (and that includes Russia!). The movie opens with a shockingly legal alcohol-related race in which you have to suck down a cold one at each turn. Disqualification is the penalty for puking. The school, much like Denmark itself, begins pondering ways to deal with this problem.

Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend

Agenda danger: Yeah, the film’s central theme is alcoholism, and while there is humor, the overall view of the problem is fairly dark. But this movie isn't
The Lost Weekend, the 1945 film that chronicles the horror of one man's alcoholism. In fact, it's maybe the lightest of Best Foreign Film winners in recent years. Consider the themes of some of the last few winners: extreme class disparity (Parasite); the mysogeny in Mexican culture (Roma); the plight of the transgendered (A Fantastic Woman); the Holocaust (Son of Saul); and bleakness of post war Poland (Ida). Some of these are fine films, but what a relief to watch a movie with great acting, Oscar-nominated directing (Thomas Vinterberg) and a story about friendship and love with no villains that don’t come out of a bottle. The fact that Vinterburg’s daughter tragically died in a car accident just four days into shooting seems to have paradoxically made the movie more uplifting than it would have been.

Best Picture that year:  Nomadland

Rating: Pour yourself a neat Smirnoff or just take a couple of slugs right from the bottle and sit down to watch this film. But keep it at that—you’ll want to take all of this enjoyable film in, no chaser need.