Mark Reviews Movies: ANOTHER ROUND

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 3, 2020

Four middle-aged men, all of them friends and high school teachers and generally bored in life, decide to test a hypothesis. A philosopher once suggested that humanity was born with a 0.05% deficit in alcohol in their blood, meaning that, in order to find some sort of physiological balance, a person should drink enough booze to make up for that proposed absence. It sounds like a joke, and it probably was intended to be. The guys in Another Round take it seriously, because there's more to gain from testing the theory, in their minds, than there is to lose.

One should probably be able to see where this is going, but writer/director Thomas Vinterberg's film is bold in the way it follow through on that inevitable decline, sincerely and without compromise. It's a sharply observed study of ennui, alcoholism, and people's ability and willingness to make as many excuses as possible in order to avoid the fact that there's something decidedly wrong within their lives. This begins as a funny film, with a premise that sounds like a gag and a playful tone, but it dives into despair—especially as the four men replace their assorted personal shortcomings with a self-inflicted problem that could do a lot more damage.

Of the four men, Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), a history teacher, is the primary focus. He's married to Anika (Maria Bonnevie), but their marriage has become little more than sharing a house with the couple's two sons, offering up information about daily schedules, and either purposefully or unintentionally avoiding each other.

Martin is miserable, and based on stories from his friends, he wasn't always like this. He and Anika used to have a lovely and enviable relationship, but now, it is as we see it. The man was once an engaging and inspiring teacher, but his students these days barely pay attention. Their parents, in fact, arrange a meeting with Martin, because the students' college prospects are suffering on account of how poorly they're doing and how unprepared for college-placement exams Martin's instruction has left them. Martin even used to dance jazz ballet, but those days are long gone.

It's at a birthday dinner for Nikolaj (Magnus Millang), a philosophy teacher turning 40, that the subject of alcohol and happiness arises. The obscure philosopher posited that all it takes to become more relaxed and inspired is to drink enough alcohol that one's blood alcohol content stays around 0.05%. Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), a physical education instructor, and Peter (Lars Ranthe), the school's music teacher, laugh at the idea and commiserate over Martin's lack of happiness with Nikolaj.

The idea strikes Martin as something worth trying, so the next day, he sneaks into the school's bathroom and starts drinking vodka straight from the bottle. When his friends find out that Martin tried the method, they decide to establish an actual experiment, with rules and measurements and an essay to track their findings.

The results are initially played as a bit of a joke. Indeed, Martin's teaching methods improve, and his students are engaged and actually learning something (It might be about how some of the most famous people in history were avid drinkers, but it's a stark improvement). Peter can finally get the school choir to sing in harmony.

Tommy becomes a successful and beloved coach for a little league soccer team (We think there might be a complication when one of the kids wants to drink from Tommy's spiked water bottle, but Vinterberg resists any conflict that simple). Nikolaj suddenly has a project that maintains his interest and even seems to help a bit with his life at home, where there's a new baby and a kid who keeps wetting the bed (There's a sad and humiliating reversal of that issue as the experiment continues).

For all of the early benefits of this little experiment, all of this, of course, is a terrible idea. The drinking persists and, as the thrill of having found some purpose and some substance-assisted joy becomes too tempting, increases.

Vinterberg is fairly subtle in portraying how the drinking affects these men's lives. Nothing comes all at once. There is no single moment of complete ruin. Indeed, everyone's lives seem to improve, at least on a superficial level. Martin, for example, takes his family on a camping trip, where he, sober as per the rules of the experiment, and Anika share a moment of pure intimacy, finally admitting how absent each has been for the other and how much they have missed each other.

The downfall is more gradual and far more sinister than one big moment. Vinterberg's setup for the drama is pretty straightforward. The experiment is an excuse to drink, and the drinking is an excuse for these men to evade the deeper problems within themselves and their relationships. These men argue that they aren't alcoholics, because they're making the conscious decision to drink and can stop whenever they want. We watch, though, as they become addicted to the idea of what the booze could do for them, and at a certain point, that chased ideal of personal improvement and the alcohol become inseparable.

Vinterberg's early comic intentions, then, become those of a slow-moving tragedy, and it's about as horrifying to watch as it sounds. The central performances each maintain some degree of desperation, but unsurprisingly, Mikkelsen has the most to do, as the temporary bandage on his marriage is quickly ripped off in one unsettling scene, and provides the film its wounded soul.

There is a question worth asking after witnessing all of this misery seemingly tied up quite conveniently by the end, and it's pretty simple: Is it actually settled, or is there something else happening in that final scene? Another Round does end with some unexpected joy—a dance sequence, in which Mikkelsen shows off his moves, while either exorcising his demons or embracing them again. Like in the rest of this film, Vinterberg doesn't accept easy solutions. One will take the final image either as the freedom of flight or the highest point before a long fall.

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