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.

 

My BFF Wrap-Up: My Ranking

Starting in June 2016, I watched and reviewed every winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, or in short, Best Foreign Film (BFF), in reverse chronological order from the 2015 entry to the awards inception in 1947 (watching the 2016 winner at the end).  Part of the experiment was to see how many of these I would be able to find.  In most cases, I was able to borrow the DVD of each film from the Cuyahoga County Library system (a consistently top rated system in Northeast Ohio), and as things went further back in time, that meant using the inter-library systems CCL employs, SearchOhio and OhioLINK.  I did have to watch a couple on the dusty old VCR.  On two or three occasions when I couldn’t find the movie through the CCL system, I was able to get DVDs from the Cleveland Public Library.  Once I paid $2 to watch a movie on Amazon, and that was the grand total of money I spent on this project.  I did find a couple rare films online, having exhausted every other possibility.  Only once was I not able to find a film at all, at least with English subtitles, and that was 1950’s The Walls of Malapaga.  I watched it only in French with Portuguese subtitles, and decided to review it anyway.

My reviews were intended for people who don’t normally watch foreign films, a group that included me not all that long ago.  I found a lot of the movies worth watching, not just ones you might see at an art house, but movies I am convinced would have been mainstream American favorites had they been in English.  I also sat through a lot of tedious, self-admiring crap that got awards for having the right political or social view to the voters of the Academy.  But enough about The Sea Inside.  My goal was to make the reviews be entertaining, especially when the movie wasn't, and to give American viewer something they could relate to.

The list here is my amateurish attempt to rank what is perhaps the unrankable.  There are a variety of genres and so many different cultures represented here that it is almost unfair to compare them against each other.  But I did anyway, and the films are listed below from best to worst.  Click any movie title to read the review.  You can follow me on Twitter at @hawley5150.   

Enjoy!

1989, Cinema Paradiso, Italy

2006, The Lives of Others, Germany

1951, Rashomon, Japan

1998, Life Is Beautiful, Italy

1957, La Strada, Italy

1949, The Bicycle Thief, Italy

2011, A Separation, Iran

1975, Dersu Uzala, Soviet Union

1967, Closely Watched Trains, Czechoslovakia

1947, Shoeshine, Italy

1964, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Italy

1963, 8½, Italy

2009, The Secret in Their Eyes, Argentina

1972, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, France

1983, Fanny and Alexander, Sweden

1962, Sundays and Cybele, France

1965, The Shop on Main Street, Czechoslovakia

1986, The Assault, The Netherlands

2000, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Taiwan

1987, Babette's Feast, France

1960, The Virgin Spring, Sweden

2002 Nowhere in Africa, Germany

1958, My Uncle, France

1971, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Italy

1968, War and Peace, Soviet Union

1957, Nights of Cabiria, Italy

2007, The Counterfeiters, Austria

1974, Amarcord, Italy

1952, Forbidden Games, France

 
1961, Through a Glass Darkly, Sweden

2014, Ida, Poland

2016, The Salesman, Iran

1948, Monsieur Vincent, France

2008, Departures, Japan

2015, Son of Saul, Hungary

1970, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Italy

1985, The Official Story, Argentina

1969, Z, Algeria

1966, A Man and a Woman, France

1973, Day for Night, France

1990, Journey of Hope, Switzerland

1980, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, Soviet Union

1982, Begin the Beguine, Spain

1993, Belle Époque, Spain

1959, Black Orpheus, France

1992, Indochine, France

1988, Pelle the Conqueror, Denmark

2005, Tsotsi, South Africa

1977, Madame Rosa, France

1981, Mephisto, Hungary

1954, Gate of Hell, Japan

2010, In a Better World, Denmark

1955, Samurai, The Legend of Musashi, Japan

2001, No Man's Land, Bosnia and Herzegovina

1976, Black and White and in Color, Ivory Coast

1979, The Tin Drum, West Germany

1996, Kolya, Czech Republic

1994,  Burnt by the Sun, Russia

1978, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, France

2012, Amour, France

2013, The Great Beauty, Italy

1997, Character, Netherlands

2014, The Sea Inside, Spain

1995, Antonia's Line, Netherlands

2003, The Barbarian Invasions, Canada

1991, Mediterraneo, Italy

1984, Dangerous Moves, France

1999, All About My Mother, Spain

1950, The Walls of Malapaga, France/Italy (not ranked)

FINE!

1965 Winner, The Shop on Main Street

The Shop on Main Street

Directors:  Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos

Distributed by:  The Criterion Collection (in U.S.)

Released:  October 1965

Country:  Czechoslovakia

Goals are important.  But sometimes it’s okay to go about your life without much ambition, existing day-to-day, enjoying what you do with a live-and-let-live attitude.  That’s how Anton Brtko, or Tóno as he is called, would prefer to have things, in The Shop on Main Street, the Czechoslovakian winner of the 1965 Best Foreign Film award.  He’s a good-natured carpenter who is willing to do the minimum amount of work and go home and soak his feet in the kitchen.  The problem is, his wife Evelina, has other ideas.  She is his Lady MacBeth, urging him to do more when he would rather stay content with what he has.  She sees that her sister is married to the town commander, Markuš, and she wants her husband to have similar ambitions.

The thing is, Markuš is the town commander in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, so his true identity is that of collaborator.  When the Nazis occupy your country, you have two choices:  go along with it or get crushed.  Markuš has chosen the former; Tóno would just as soon ignore the whole situation.  Markuš is a total blowhard, but he is able to secure Tóno an opportunity to move up in the world, and

Tono and his Lady MacBeth, Evelina

there is no way Evelina is going to allow him to refuse that opportunity.  Markuš has arranged it so that Tóno will be able to take over a little sewing shop—all he has to do is walk in and start running the place.

That may seem a bit odd, but this is part of the Nazis’ Aryanization program—in other words, the shop on Main Street already has an owner—a Jewish one—who by law has to give up ownership to a non-Jew.  When Tóno goes in on his first day, he is surprised to learn that the store is run by a kind old widow named Rozália.  Rozália is sort of deaf and slightly senile and never quite grasps the fact that Tóno is there to take the place away from her, not become her assistant.  Tóno, kind-hearted man that he is, allows her to think she is still running things, and the two of them soon form an odd but sweet friendship.

The Shop on Main Street is part of the Czechoslovak New Wave of the 1960’s, like Closely Watched Trains, 1967’s Best Foreign Film winner, though unlike most films in this movement, which were Czech, it was largely a Slovak production.  It ends up being a mostly dark film, yet is genuinely funny at times.  Jozef Kroner plays Tóno as incredibly likeable, and Tóno’s relationship with Rozália is unusual yet strangely romantic in a way.  She is the lovely woman that his wife is not.  Polish actress Ida Kamińska’s performance as Rozália is engaging and heartbreaking.

Tono and Rozalia

The way the mood turned in this movie snuck up on me—at first, it seemed almost to be a comedy, with broad characters and amusing situations, like Italy’s Life is Beautiful.  But as the story unfolds, we remember that a main character is a Jewish woman in the Holocaust era, and that makes this film a tragedy.  And The Shop on the Corner shows us an Aryan man who just wanted to live his life the way he wanted to, but inevitably is destined to become part of that tragedy.

The Title:  Obchod na korze.  The title may sound like, but is nothing like, Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 comedy The Shop Around the Corner, set in Hungary.  If you haven’t checked that one out, you should!

The culture:  Director Ján Kadár actually was a professor in Prague, and taught many of the directors of the New Czechoslovak movement.  There are a number of Best Foreign Films (nine, by my count) that deal with the Holocaust in some way, and this one is among the most moving.  Especially emotional is the film’s final act, with the inevitably tragic ending, yet with optimism ultimately winning out in the end.

Agenda danger:  The film was funded by the Communist government, but they didn’t like Nazis anymore than anyone else did.

"Go ahead, blow your whistle, I dare you."

Best Picture that year:  The Sound of Music.  Another film about the Nazis, sort of.  This is completely off topic, but I always thought one of the most bone-headed moves in all of cinema was when Christopher Plummer goads Rolfe into blowing his whistle by telling him, “You’ll never be one of them.” A karate chop to Rolfe’s neck would probably have been the smarter move.

Rating:  This movie drew me in more and more as the story moved along.  It allows you to really get to know the characters so that you really begin to hope that what you think will happen won’t.  But in the end, I didn’t feel bad about the inevitable tragedy because the important thing is that these two characters found each other and established a true friendship despite of it.