THE JOURNAL
The Oscar-Winning Film That’s Challenging (And Celebrating) Our Relationship With Drinking
Mr Mads Mikkelsen in Another Round (2020). Photograph by Mr Henrik Ohsten/Mongrel Media
I guess it depends on your experience. How far you tipped over the line, or how often. If you got out of it, got away with it or are still in it. The varying levels of regret, the occasional upset. Or maybe you’ve enjoyed a perfectly healthy relationship with alcohol, exercising moderation and self-discipline. The first time I watched Mr Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, though – out in the UK on 2 July – I was hit by little shudders. Flashbacks of a former life, or at least a slightly more reckless one. I can’t remember another film having quite the same effect.
Another Round is not a morality play. It doesn’t preach; in fact, it goes out of its way to not come down on either side of an argument. It is heart-stopping and heart-warming, extolling the joys of drinking without shying away from its ruinous potential. During some stretches, it’s a reminder of the scourge that alcohol irrefutably is, and at other points it gave me sharp pangs of nostalgia for the good times, the pure platonic pleasure of drinking with friends, the wild nights where nothing else mattered. Denmark’s Vinterberg and his co-writer, Mr Tobias Lindholm, began with the intention of celebrating alcohol, but as they developed the film, they began exploring the darker side, too, as they both know people who have died from alcohol-related causes. It’s a masterful balancing act.
It has won numerous awards over the past year, including best international/foreign language film at the Oscars and the Baftas. They were well-deserved. If you’ve seen Vinterberg’s 1998 bleak black comedy Festen, you will know what a searing dramatist he is. And if you’ve seen his 2012 child abuse thriller The Hunt, you’ll know that he can wring a raw performance from Mr Mads Mikkelsen, who again takes the lead here. Another Round doesn’t mess about. Except when it does.
The film tells the story of four middle-aged schoolteachers, all failing to inspire much in their teenage students. Mikkelsen’s Martin, a history teacher, is in the biggest rut. In class he seems bored himself. Life at home with his wife and teenage kids is barely any better: it’s hard to say if it’s loveless, but it’s definitely listless. He is a man in monotone, going through the motions.
“There is that courage that comes with the first couple of drinks”
At a dinner, psychology teacher Nikolaj (Mr Magnus Millang) mentions a theory that we all have a shortfall in our blood alcohol content that is easily fixed by a glass or two of wine, ensuring that we’re more relaxed, poised, courageous. As the other three men drink at this dinner – champagne, then vodka – Martin, at first not partaking, goes through a seemingly subtle, but substantial transformation. In the midst of a quiet breakdown, he is broken. Twelve years earlier, we discover, he was destined for greatness in his profession, but just didn’t pursue it, settling down with his family and leaving ambition behind. Maybe he’s using the kids as an excuse. Either way, he’s barely existing. And here at the table, he deals with that by downing some vodka. And then some wine.
The next morning, Martin quaffs Smirnoff in the school toilet. It works: he has a good day of teaching. The other three follow suit, all secretly drinking before class, and soon they’re all revitalised. Things, as you might imagine, escalate. Martin even teaches his pupils about the drinking habits of accomplished world leaders, informing them that Sir Winston Churchill would imbibe all sorts before bed. Vinterberg has expanded on this in press interviews for the film. “With Dunkirk, when Churchill asked civilians to get into their boats, was he drunk that day?” he has asked. “There is that courage that comes with the first couple of drinks.” It’s a pretty wild theory, although, according to some accounts of Churchill’s adoration of alcohol, perhaps not.
Another Round’s original Danish title was Druk, which means “binge drinking”. The Danes, Vinterberg has said, “drink like Vikings”. According to a recent World Health Organisation report, Danish 15-year-olds drink almost twice as much as their European counterparts. The country’s commitment to alcohol is commented on more than once in the film. “I couldn’t care less if you drink with your friends,” one of the character’s wives says. “This entire country drinks like maniacs anyway.”
Can I shock you? This is not an exclusively Danish phenomenon. Nor is it a teenage one. A recent CDC report found that one in six US adults binge drinks around four times a month, and that those who do are doing it more than ever. The rise is mostly with those over 35. A 2020 NHS report found that the proportion of British people drinking more than the recommended 14 units a week was most common among 55 to 64 year olds.
“The film became a celebration of life, a vibrant, shimmering ode to living to our fullest”
And it’s no accident that all four of Another Round’s leads are male. In the UK, men are more likely than women to drink at increasing and higher risk levels. In the US, binge drinking is twice as common among men than women. Meanwhile, another UK study last year found that the pandemic has seen a rise in binge drinking among over-50s, with one in four potentially dependent on alcohol, in danger of damaging their health. Many of us drink like Vikings, and Another Round speaks to the enormous prevalence of alcohol in our lifestyles. And how it bonds us.
Before the men of the film truly lose their way, it’s bloody funny, verging on slapstick, especially a sequence in which they attempt to buy a codfish, one of them stumbling into a display, crashing across an aisle. They end up in an affectionately rowdy bar, perhaps inevitably with Martin standing on a table. It’s a joy to watch all of this, to take in that unbridled bonding and sheer idiocy. Endless good nights from years ago came flooding back to me. God knows how many tables I’ve stood on – and fallen off of. And the four actors in Another Round pull it off with uncanny accuracy, four Buster Keatons failing to master coordination, grappling with basic movement, at war with their motor systems.
It may well be the most authentic drunk acting ever seen on film, for good reason: for a whole week before shooting, Vinterberg lead them in a drunk bootcamp, in which they spent the time drinking, the director filming them at different levels of intoxication, so they knew how to move and behave after their characters consumed very specific amounts of alcohol. Once cameras rolled, they didn’t touch a drop, but they had all of that footage to draw upon.
The film does get ugly after it has its fun; things do. The nights where I did too many doubles and too many shots, sizeable chunks of memory never returned. Little bits of brain damage. Moments of time that will never come back. I didn’t care so much what had happened; I cared that I didn’t know. Those were the wake-up calls. The memory was gone, but that fear stuck around. Moderation and self-discipline come more naturally to some than others. Logic and reason can be similarly elusive. Especially if you’ve had a few drinks. I got lucky: eventually it just stopped. My tendency to go large – and, to be honest, my stamina for it – it all just fizzled out. It doesn’t for everybody. I’m grateful for it.
Another Round doesn’t for a second dare to instruct us. When Vinterberg conceived it, it was meant to be a celebration of alcohol, and that changed to some extent. But mostly, the film became a celebration of life, a vibrant, shimmering ode to living to our fullest – not least because Vinterberg’s daughter, who loved the script, encouraged him to make the film and had a small role in it, tragically died four days into the shoot. After that, it found vital purpose.
And that’s what really makes it work. Even if you’ve never touched a drop of drink, its exaltation of friendship will resonate and ring true. It is a bittersweet, but full-blooded ode to brotherhood, and about appreciating what’s in front of you. Sometimes alcohol can help us to do that. Sometimes it ruins everything. Another Round just presents it as is.
