VIFF review: Another Round takes a cuttingly funny look at boozing
Dane director Thomas Vinterberg’s latest takes a hard look at male middle-age
Mads Mikelsen’s Martin (second from right) and his high-school-teaching buddies create an elaborate drinking game.
Streams to October 7 as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival, via VIFF.org.
FOR THOSE WHO’VE turned to day-drinking to take the edge off pandemic stress, Thomas Vinterberg’s sensationally inappropriate toast to middle-age masculinity will be a bit sobering.
In the Danish director’s latest black comedy, four bored high-school teachers take part in their own experiment: inspired by research showing humans are about 0.05 percent short in blood-alcohol content, they decide to see if booze can improve their lives.
Soon, Martin (Mads Mikelsen), who’s been sleepwalking through his senior history class, is receiving cheers from his students—and giving lessons on his new hero Winston Churchill who (guess what?) won World War II while pickled. At home, sparks return to Martin’s distant relationship with his wife.
If the guys could just leave it there, they might be fine. But of course they can’t. Cue teachers toting their schnapps to school in water bottles and stowing mickeys in the gym locker, continually upping the ante on their game. At one point they go Hemingway and decide any amount of liquor is okay as long as you quit by 8 p.m. The principal is not amused. Neither are their wives and kids.
You might predict from Vinterberg’s tendency to black humour, not to mention personal experience, that all of this ends badly. You’d be right. Things get incredibly dark—going far beyond the men realizing that getting gooned by noon does not, contrary to Bacardi and Captain Morgan ads, provide a complete escape from life’s problems.
But then there’s the ending: a brilliant and unexpected flight of fancy—a resolution that will rekindle your faith in both humanity and boozing, where and when it’s used to celebrate. The stoic Mikelsen dancing? That’s just the start of the fun.
In his own middle age, Vinterberg is showing a command of the camera and story that’s evolved from the dizzying handheld work of The Celebration. Thankfully, this new maturity has not made him shy away from the challenging and uncomfortable (by the way, see 2012’s The Hunt).
Vinterberg also gives a sly nod to a culture, particularly his own homeland’s, that encourages guzzling enough to float the Royal Danish Navy. The way liquor is deeply woven into the fabric of his country is apparent not just in the high school seniors’ drinking games but in the way the buddies’ favourite uppity restaurant uncorks a new high-faluting vintage to match each course.
Those wanting a clearer, moralistic indictment of getting wasted will have to look elsewhere. Another Round is more interested in the contradictory feelings we have about alcohol--and about settling down as we get older.
In these waning days of the Vancouver International Film Festival, make sure to catch one of its strongest offerings. We caught it live and in-person, which probably added to its heady feel, in a socially distanced screening at the Vancity Theatre. Those events over, you'll have to watch it at home--where it's up to you whether you want to pour a Negroni to go along with it. Just stay under 0.05.
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