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.

 

2018 Winner, A Fantastic Woman

A Fantastic Woman

Director:  Sebastián Lelio

Distributed by:  Sony Pictures Classics

Released:  Februay 2017

Country:  Chile

Imagine a woman, in her late 20’s or so, a waitress and an aspiring opera singer.  She is dating a rather wealthy man in his early 60’s, and has recently moved into his rather luxurious apartment.  The man is divorced or separated from his wife, with whom he has a nine-year-old daughter.  He left her for the younger woman, apparently unable or unwilling to keep his urges for the younger woman in check, thinking he is in love.  One day, the man falls suddenly ill after sex with the younger woman and dies in the hospital.  After his death, the woman still has the keys to the man’s car and apartment and takes her sweet time giving both of them up to her late lover’s family.  She insists on attending the dead man’s services in spite of the demand by the family that she stay away to spare their feelings, including that of the nine-year-old.  The question:  Is this a Fantastic Woman?

Ah, but I left out one smallest of small details—the woman, quite recently, went by the name of Daniel.  The Fantastic Woman is, you see, a transsexual named Marina.  And Marina seems nice enough, a person with insecurities and talents and the need for love, just like anyone else.  But because she was a man, she gets treated impolitely, even harshly, by a number of people she encounters after the death of her boyfriend, Orlando.

Marina and Old Orlando

For one thing, when she brings him to the hospital, the staff don’t consider her family and therefore don’t allow her into his room.  While waiting for Marina to take him to the hospital, Orlando takes a tumble down a flight of stairs, resulting in some bruising and a contusion on his head.  Marina is questioned by police about it and about the fact that she inexplicably ran away from the hospital for a time after bringing Orlando there; they wrongly suspect there may have been domestic abuse.  During questioning they check Marina’s ID and take pictures of Marina’s entire body to check for bruises--as someone puts it, she "hasn't had the operation yet."  Orlando’s ex-wife isn’t too big a fan either.  She tells Marina that when Orlando left her, she told him that Marina was a perversion.  She calls Marina a “chimera,” which seems to cut Marina deeply.  I had to look up the definition--"an illusion or fabrication of the mind."  Ouch?

From what I could gather, the point of the film was to elicit sympathy for Marina and antipathy for those who mistreat Marina.  The plot was rather thin and the last 30 minutes or so seemed to drag on endlessly with no real resolution.  Basically, it seems what makes Marina a fantastic woman is that she is a victim.

The films is very skillfully and aesthetically photographed, a real pleasure to look at.  Santiago, Chile, comes off looking bright, sophisticated, and colorful.  The acting was fine, though I found Daniella Vega, who plays Marina, to be a bit one-note, not really moving beyond a sort of dull melancholy.  Overall, this wasn’t a bad movie, really, just an overpraised one.  Again, had the main character not been transgendered/transexual, I would have still found Marina to be hard to like.  But while the Academy, the critics, and whoever wrote the film wanted the viewer to find Marina to be “fantastic,” I did not.

Some guy stuck on an elevator with Marina and Orlando's wife: AWKWARD!

The Title:   Una mujer fantastic.  We live in a time in which one has to be careful when one discusses any LGBTQ in a manner that is anything but fully accepting.  In many circles, it is frowned upon, even illegal, to not accept a person’s gender as something other than what they were born as.  That said, I found it interesting that the protagonist in this film is labeled “fantastic,” a word which can be defined as “based on fantasy, not real.”  I suppose the writer of the film, which very much is sympathetic to Marina, may have been trying to be ironic, or witty, or something.

The culture:  First Best Foreign Film winner from Chile, it comes off as a slightly less than conservative country, with vestiges of its Catholic heritage intact. 

Agenda danger:  Frankly, I had a bit of a headache from being hit over the head with the message of the film, which was that those who don’t accept trans-sexuality are numerous and despicable.  In one scene, a group of thugs terrorize Marina with slurs and wrap her head in scotch tape.  But even the people who seem to be polite to Marina hold an obvious dislike for who she is or has chosen to be.

Scene from The Shape of Water

Best Picture that year:  The Shape of Water.  Hoo boy, it seems Oscar had a real agenda on its (his? her?) mind this year.  This Guillermo del Toro film tells the story of a woman who has a hankering for a fish.  And I don’t mean she enjoys a good tuna fish sandwich every now and again; I mean she enjoys getting boned by a fish man, obviously not a fillet.  That story, while more “fantastic” than A Fantastic Woman, is even more blatant in its message that all relationships of a sexual nature are equally acceptable.  Even if one agrees with this concept wholeheartedly, it's hard not to feel preached to in watching these two films.

Rating:  I didn’t find this film fantastic by any definition.  Mostly, it was a bore.