The chief reason to see Another Round is a terrific performance from Mads Mikkelsen, teaming up once again with The Hunt director Thomas Vinterberg for a Danish drama with a provocative premise—what if the answer to a mid-life crisis is to forego antidepressants and self-medicate, daily, with alcohol? No doubt that sounds familiar. But Another Round takes a different tact—what if the alcohol healed your sense of emptiness? Made you funnier? More likable? Better at your job? More engaged in life?
That’s the thrust of Another Round, a movie that in a small, daring way suggests we all might be a little bit better at life—and looser in the process—if we replace our morning Starbucks with a shot or two of (insert favorite aperitif). If we did, then perhaps like the film’s reenergized characters, for awhile at least, we just might be ahead of the game.
Mikkelsen stars as fortysomething Copenhagen high school teacher Martin, and as the picture opens he has a remarkable scene in a restaurant with his three male best friends (and fellow teachers) where he opens up about the emptiness from which he can no longer hide. It’s a stunning moment featuring the sort of dialogue and acting that merits a Best Actor Oscar nod.
At the dinner are Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), Peter (Lars Ranthe) and Nikolaj (Magnus Millang), celebrating his 40th birthday. It’s not lost on Martin that he’s misplaced his joie de vivre, and in all areas of his life—he’s no longer engaged in his job and is distant from wife Anika (Maria Bonnevie) and young son, and feels powerless to turn the tide.
His confession leads to an inebriated discussion of a Norweigian therapist’s claims that .05 percent alcohol (a few small points below legal intoxication in the U.S.) in the bloodstream is optimal for human fulfillment. Under the guise of testing this hypothesis, the four faculty colleagues start the very next day with a drink, and voila – each soon feels unshackled from his professional and personal ennui. Their students feel as if they are meeting the men anew; they are energized, funny and unorthodox in ways that create new engagement in the classroom and their lives, including newfound chivalry with their wives.
It’s not a surprise what happens next is the upping of the ante—Martin feels that more alcohol can only make things even better, and the men follow suit—taking things right off the rails. Domestic problems are dramatically amplified. Professions are lost. An accidental, or suicidal, death ensues.
Another Round is a slick piece of diversion, and a thoughtful enough movie not merely about midlife crises and the male ego but about the human need to find new connections with one’s world in order to break through the pain of disillusionment. While the film is watchable and diverting, Vinterberg takes a bit of a step down here from his devastating, man wrongly accused drama The Hunt, in which Mikkelsen gave an all-timer of a performance. Here the agenda is entertainment, which the picture does, but it also sacrifices subversion for happy endings. In the shadow of The Hunt’s greatness, one hopes for a return to that picture’s lacerating social commentary over the warm fuzzies of this one.
Making a film about drunks is rife with peril for actors, who often can’t help but wallow in excess and, quite broadly, indicate inebriation though stumbles and slurs. Another Round has too much artistry to lean on such artifice, and Mikkelsen, a complete package actor who possesses the immaculate technique of the greats and the face of a movie star, never steps wrong, playing Martin’s psychology above all, whether sober or on a buzz; it ranks amongst the very best onscreen this season
Yet, there is something about Another Round that feels slightly conventional, not ultimately incisive or raw enough or perhaps just too determined to please the audience; it ends on a moment of uplift involving the arrival of an unexpected (and unlikely) phone call that is pure movieish hooey one might suspect manufactured by Hollywood rather than a consummate Danish filmmaker. The crowd-pleasing final scene is more a loving tribute to a wonderful actor’s estimable skills as a showman than dramatically consistent with the rest of the film. It’s great if you don’t stop to think about it too much.
You may, as I did.
3 stars.
