Film Review — Another Round
The excellent Mads Mikkelsen on top form anchors Thomas Vinterberg’s funny, poignant, nuanced take on boozing
There’s a scene early in Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round that underscores why the excellent Mads Mikkelsen has become one of my favourite actors. Mikkelsen plays disillusioned, weary, middle-aged history teacher Martin, who is out with three friends and colleagues to celebrate a birthday. After some initial pleasant conversation, Martin gets visibly emotional about the state of his life, to the concern of his friends. The elegant subtlety of the performance in this unexpected scene turn is a masterpiece of understated, leading-life-of-quiet-desperation nuance.
In view of Martin’s state of mind, his friends suggest an experiment to test the research of a Norwegian scientist who wrote a controversial paper claiming humans have an alcohol deficiency that means they fail to operate at optimum levels. The idea is to maintain a certain level of alcohol in the bloodstream and see whether it transforms their lives for the better. The four friends decide to give this a go — with much enthusiasm — though said experiment has to be kept secret for a variety of reasons. For one thing, their principal is cracking down on alcohol use due to concerns her teenage charges might be going overboard on the…
