In Vino Veritas

 Movies: Another Round

"To alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems!"

~Homer J. Simpson

Films that deal with alcohol use tend to go one of two ways: either the booze is an accelerant for good/crazy times, like in any movie about college, weddings, celebrations, etc, or alcohol is shown as a crippling drug that ruins lives, such as in films like Smashed, The Lost Weekend, and Days of Wine and Roses. Another Round, directed by Thomas Vinterberg, is the rare film that takes a more balanced approach to alcohol. 

This Danish dramedy stars the incomparable Mads Mikkelsen as Martin, one of four friends--all male, all teachers at the same high school, and all middle-aged--who are finding life a bit boring lately. Martin, especially, is clearly depressed. At a dinner out to celebrate Nikolaj's (Magnus Millanj) 40th birthday, quiet Martin bursts into tears after a couple glasses of champagne. He is a mess: his marriage has lost its spark, he is no longer the inspiring history teacher respected by his students that he once was, and he's just tired and worn down. The other men agree and Nikolaj's suggests a rather wild experiment to see if the friends can get their collective groove back: he cites the work of Finn Skarderud, a psychiatrist who posits that humans are born with a blood alcohol level 0.05% too low, and actually function and work best with a glass or two of alcohol in them at all times.

The friends set down some rules for the experiment: they will *only* drink during working hours on Monday-Friday and will stop drinking at 8pm on weeknights and not drink on the weekend. Since they are only supposed to be operating with a BAC of 0.05%, they will aim for one unit of alcohol per hour, on average.

So, uh, this leads the men to bring water bottles of vodka to the high school (!!!) they work at and teach while ever-so-slightly inebriated. Man, only in Denmark! 

They discover that the experiment...works! Martin goes back to being the cool, loose, funny teacher he was before. Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), a gym teacher who coaches boys soccer outside of school, connects with one lonely kid--nicknamed "Specs" due to his glasses--and inspires him to play fearlessly on the field. Likewise, Nikolaj and Peter (Lars Ranthe) find that their lives are improving also. 

So they decide, "if a little alcohol is good, more must be better!". Because that's how alcohol works, right? This is where the movie starts to move into "after school special" territory. As the friends up their alcohol intake, they begin to face consequences. This culminates in an evening where they "experiment" by drinking as much as they possibly can to "see what happens" (I mean, did these dudes even go to college?). Well, Martin's wife kicks him out, Nikolaj pisses the marital bed, Tommy comes to work drunk, and I can't remember what happens with Peter because he's kind of the boring one of the group. But I assume he had a wicked hangover the next day.

This is where I had an issue with Another Round: not that it showed the consequences of drinking too much--in fact, I'm actually quite glad the film did that--but that it expected the audience to believe that four grown ass men wouldn't realize that drinking nearly every day, more and more, and while at work wouldn't lead to a dark place*. It's almost like these men are space aliens who are like "we are experimenting with the substance known as "alcohol" that earthlings seem to love. What will happen?" The entire premise of the film is pretty unbelievable in the first place--would all four men really agree that drinking at their job (A HIGH SCHOOL!!!) could be a fun experiment? Martin, in particular, seemed to be a teetotaler or only occasional drinker who jumped right into bringing booze to work. It just stretches the limits of believability.  

The film gets even darker than a night of drunken revelry before the end, and I won't go into what happens to avoid spoilers. But I found the final third of the film pretty jarring in how it went from very dark to the final scene of Mads Mikkelsen dancing (and drinking) alongside his graduating seniors in a moment of pure euphoria and lust for life. The final scene is a delightful one, but it comes so quickly after some really intense shit that it just feels like whiplash. I think Vinterberg really could have done a better job on pacing in this movie.

Overall, Another Round is a celebration of life and a reminder that you're never too old to change things up. It also has a message buried deep inside that you don't actually need drugs to get high. You can apparently get high on life, even in Denmark. Despite the somewhat implausible plot and pacing issues, I found Another Round charming--most of the credit goes to Mikkelsen who could read a phone book for two hours and still be a compelling actor. 

Grade: B+ 

*I want to be clear that I'm not saying it's implausible for someone to develop a drinking problem (at any age) without really even being aware that that's what's happening. That happens all the time, and is very serious (and nothing to be ashamed of!). In the case of this film, it's about four guys who by all accounts seem to be average-to-occasional drinkers who latch onto the wild idea that drinking at work will be a good thing and kind of peer-pressure each other into going along, and drinking more and more. It was as if they barely knew how alcohol worked. That was what I found implausible.