This Oscar-Winning Dark Comedy Is an Intoxicating Dive Into Mayhem

Most of the world would like to forget that the year 2020 ever occurred. At the moment, it felt like life as we knew it hardly existed, as we involuntarily sequestered ourselves in confined universes detached from reality. As a result, many steadfast film viewers were checked out of the cycle of new releases on streaming and VOD. Even if the theatrical window was shut down, the film ecosystem continued–just at a less frequent output rate. The Academy Awards, covering the 2020 and early 2021 slate of movies, was an uncanny experience for viewers at home. Still, it did honor a handful of worthy films, including that year’s winner for Best International Feature Film, Another Round. The Danish film by Thomas Vinterberg is a dark comedy that’s equally a rollicking and downbeat portrayal of alcoholism.

Thomas Vinterberg’s Dogme 95 Movement is Represented in ‘Another Round’

Released online in December 2020, Another Round follows a group of high school teachers in Copenhagen who partake in a binge-drinking experiment to test if their social and professional lives will benefit from intoxication. The teachers, Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), Peter (Lars Ranthe), and Nikolaj (Magnus Millang), form a pact to drink during every workday but set aside specific rules to avoid unhealthy habits. In no time, they become inspired, revitalized, and enlightened, but things turn sour when the inevitable effects of constant intoxication damage their personal lives. The film, which premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, is another collaboration between Vinterberg, nominated for Best Director at the 93rd Academy Awards, and Mikkelsen, following their 2012 psychological drama, The Hunt. In America, Mikkelsen is typecast as the stone-faced villain in Hollywood’s most bankable franchises; James Bond (Casino Royale), the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Doctor Strange), and Indiana Jones (Dial of Destiny), but under Vinterberg’s direction, he shines as an actor with incredible range.

Vinterberg is best remembered as the co-founder of Dogme 95 with fellow Danish avant-garde filmmaker, Lars von Trier. The cinematic movement was a pact between Vinterberg and von Trier to seize creative control from the studios by reverting films to their fundamentals. Dogme 95 films were low-budget, shot on handheld cameras, used natural lighting, and prohibited non-diegetic music. Essentially, Dogme 95 stripped films to their core, producing grounded dramas focused on the performances rather than the usual spectacle of Hollywood entertainment. By peeling back the layers of artificiality in films, the movement churned out challenging humanist dramas such as The Celebration and Breaking the Waves, directed by Vinterberg and von Trier, respectively. Dogme 95’s influence is evident in mumblecore, a subgenre that preferred intimacy and bare-bones formalism.

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Vinterberg’s background as a pioneer of iconoclast filmmaking provides insightful context to Another Round. The subjects of the film are weary of their mundane lives. This feeling is exacerbated by their disconnect from their students, with both parties sharing a growing sense of contempt for each other, as Martin, a history teacher, is viewed by students and parents as just an obstacle in their way of graduating. To a degree, the four friends are cogs in the machine of the school system, but their passion for education exists deep down. They just need a spark to break them out of this midlife crisis. After discussing the theory of psychiatrist Finn Skårderud that living with a blood alcohol content of 0.05% improves human creativity, the teachers, like the Danish filmmakers in the ’90s, form a pact to rekindle their craft; only the teachers become inspired by drinking. They establish a set of rules to enforce that the experiment is for professional growth and not an act of hedonism.

Another Round, stylistically, was informed by Dogme 95’s minimalist approach, according to Vinterberg, but one can’t help but link the director’s background to the thematic elements of the film as well. Because of its emphasis on intellect and control, Another Round is a paradoxical midlife crisis dramedy. While the characters indulge in the debauchery of binge drinking, their pact was not born out of nihilism. They turn to drinking to improve their mindfulness. The film depicts arguably the most self-conscious hedonists to appear on-screen, as they undergo this experiment with such fastidiousness in the beginning, but their strict rules are no match for the destructive nature of binge drinking. Martin and Nikolaj’s family lives become fractured, more so than they were before drinking. Tommy, incapable of quitting the experiment, sails out to the ocean and drowns, ending his life.

How ‘Another Round’ Shows the Thrills and Horrors of Binge-Drinking

Vinterberg’s direction is sympathetic to the character’s motivations, notably Martin, who carries himself as the most desperate of the group. Mikkelsen, blessed with a one-of-a-kind face, expresses relief and discomfort when participating in this experiment. His apprehensiveness for drinking while teaching is conveyed through his eyes, but in the same breath, partaking in an illicit act gives him a visceral rush of liberation. The positive effect of drinking shows in the classroom, where he can now connect with his students at a primal level, breaking the former superficiality of his history lessons. In one lecture, he holds a mock election featuring three anonymous candidates: the first two being unfaithful alcoholics with a checkered history, and the third one being a highly decorated veteran and upstanding citizen. Naturally, the class unanimously agrees that the third candidate is the best. The first two candidates were Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, while the third candidate was Adolf Hitler. This exercise, a demonstration of the adage “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” validates Martin’s epiphany that there is more depth to people than what meets the eye. Intoxication provides Martin with an untapped egoism, and this exercise is also an opportunity to compare himself to Churchill, a powerful wartime leader who enjoyed his liquor.

Believing that they are leaving more chances for growth on the table, Martin encourages the group to increase their daily BAC from 0.05% to 0.10%. Alcohol consumption takes center stage in his life and his class lessons. As it turns out, it’s easy to bond with his teenage students over discussing alcohol. Vinterberg’s pacing and camera movements accelerate once the group increases their daily alcohol consumption. The confidence gained by drinking and teaching allows them to enjoy the benefits of intoxication, including shamelessly dancing with each other. By nature, cinema inherently glorifies whatever activity is portrayed on screen. When the teachers sit around and swill on Ssazerac, a whiskey cocktail, and dance to the funk track “Cissy Strut,” the vibes are wholesome. Vinterberg never softens the edges of alcoholism, as it can be unapologetically jovial at one moment and disturbing at another moment. Nikolaj’s debauchery is punished by showing him as a neglectful husband and father, and worst of all, Tommy’s substance abuse causes him to take his own life. The scene is cut between the students celebrating upon receiving passing grades, confirming their graduation status. The teachers hug their students in approval, suggesting that their experiment, at the very least, benefitted the lives of these aspiring young adults, but Tommy’s tragic fate confirms that purposeful binge drinking does not warrant a happy ending.

The Ending of ‘Another Round’ is Both a Triumph and a Free-Fall Into Mayhem

Despite being a downbeat dramedy about alcoholism, Another Round ends with the visceral charge of an action thriller. Following Tommy’s funeral, the three encounter their recently graduated students partying in the harbor. Martin, who quit drinking, was initially hesitant, but upon encouragement, breaks into a show-stopping dance number after chugging a bottle of champagne. Mikkelsen, a former dancer, displays his natural abilities in this stirring set piece that perfectly encapsulates the film. Upon being showered with champagne, the film closes on a freeze-frame of Martin jumping into the water. Thomas Vinterberg, a director who thrives off raw emotions stripped of the artifice of filmmaking, distills the conflicting dynamics of drinking with this boisterous conclusion. Martin’s dance number recalls the highs of his previous life as an alcoholic. The sequence, from its music, downpour of champagne, and Martin’s athleticism, is a blast to watch. In the context of the story, rather than emotional triumph, the dance carries a downbeat connotation, as Martin appears to be grappling with the grief of his friend’s death through drunken behavior. Alcoholism offers no easy answers or conclusions–a reality that Another Round embraces from its first sip down to the last drop of a liquor bottle.

Another Round is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.

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