Another Round
Four Copenhagen high-school teachers – one played by Mads Mikkelsen – try to escape their existential lethargy through a sustained alcoholic buzz in this compassionate study of everyday life from Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg
Simply existing as an adult in the modern world is an emotional, psychological and logistical ordeal. Relationships must be maintained, homes cleaned, meals prepared and the grind of work endlessly pursued. When Martin (Mikkelsen) and his three friends – all teachers – find themselves in this existential lethargy, they embark on a quasi-scientific experiment: exorcising their middle-aged malaise through a sustained blood alcohol content of 0.05%.
This provocative premise could so easily slip into machismo or moralisation, but Another Round is too sympathetic a film for such recourses, fuelled not by sensationalist voyeurism but a curiosity for the ways in which joy can be recognised and embraced. Writer-director Thomas Vinterberg’s approach is markedly intimate, the affection between the men afforded rare depth through an emotionally astute script and performances made all the more dynamic for their understated, worn-in presence. It is an incisive psychological portrait that plays beautifully alongside the heady sensuality of their unconventional self-care: the crisp crackle of a vodka bottle's seal breaking, the velvety glug of blood-red wine in a fine-spun glass.
There are no ironic digs at mid-life crises in Another Round, only compassion and warm moments of humour. Through this perfectly balanced tone, Vinterberg lays the groundwork for an evocative study of everyday life: a little mundane, a little devastating, and with infinite potential for beauty.