Review: Another Round

Martin (Mads Mikkelson) is in a rut. A high school teacher who's boring his students, a married man who barely speaks to his wife, he's drifting through life, the promise of his younger years long gone. Then at a birthday party with three friends - all of whom share his sense of a life slipping away - one of them comes up with an idea: why not get drunk and stay drunk all the time?

Thanks to a fairly dubious-sounding theory that people are born with an alcohol deficiency and the natural blood alcohol content for a human is .05%, the quartet embark on an experiment that largely involves stashing booze all around the school and topping themselves up whenever they can. 

And for a while it works. Sure, they reek of alcohol, their hidden booze keeps getting discovered, and the occasional slurred word and stumble threatens to give the game away - but they feel more alive and engaged than they have in years, and their work and home lives are on the way up. Until they aren't.

As a low stakes look at middle age despondency this isn't quite as grim as it could be, but there's little denying the overall mood isn't so much "feel good" as "feel anything". These are men on the downhill slope of life, and while their boozy scheme does help them reconnect with the world around them, it's only ever a temporary solution.

It might seem obvious that things are going to come to a bad end - they're middle aged men drinking during the day; if this was a movie made in the west the demon drink would have them all dead and the school burnt down - but writer / director Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt) underplays that angle in a way that highlights the many differences between Europe and the English-speaking world.

Here the men's problem isn't framed so much as drinking itself as it is that drinking - especially excessive drinking - is an activity for the young. The quartet's problem isn't so much the physical affects of drinking (though they definitely play their part) as it is their ultimately doomed attempt to recapture their youth. Some of them realise what's done is done and move on; some don't.

As a regular, average, beaten down schlub, Mikkelson hits the perfect balance of present-day depression and past potential. His former glories are behind him, but that doesn't mean he can't reach back and grasp them for a moment here and there, and it's hard not to cheer him onwards even when it's clear the path he's heading down can't end well - any movement is better than the numb stasis he's been in. 

The film doesn't exactly end on a sombre note, or a hopeful one, or even a combination of the two; rather it captures everything the film's said and releases it in a moment of pure expression that - whatever this film's other flaws - is one of the most striking and heartfelt conclusions seen in a long while.

 

- Anthony Morris