‘Another Round’ explores theory on alcohol
Film’s director, star talk about mixture of darkness, light
It’s a genuine idea, put forth by Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skarderud, that humans naturally have a blood-alcohol level lower than what it should be. In the Danish movie “Another Round,” that theory is interrogated in unexpectedly emotional ways.
Reuniting director Thomas Vinterberg and star Mads Mikkelsen, who joined forces on the Oscar-nominated “The Hunt,” “Another Round” recently won big at the European Film Awards, including best film, actor and director, and took home the Academy Award for international feature.
In the bittersweet drama, Mikkelsen plays Martin, a middle-age schoolteacher who has felt the spark dim from his marriage, his work and his life. So he and some teacher friends decide to put Skarderud’s notion to the test with a drinking regimen. What at first seems a jolly and surprisingly effective idea begins to take on a darker and destructive cast as they continue with their experiment and Martin learns some hard-won lessons about himself.
The movie’s mixture of darkness with light went behind the scenes as well. Four days into shooting, Vinterberg’s 19-year-old daughter, Ida, who was set to be in the movie, died in a car accident. After a break, Vinterberg returned to complete the project. “Another Round” is dedicated to her.
This interview with Vinterberg and Mikkelsen has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: Thomas, how did you and your co-writer, Tobias Lindholm, extrapolate this blood-alcohol theory into a story of male middle-age crisis?
Vinterberg: Well, I’ve got to remind you that this is an idea that has developed over years. To begin with, we just looked at world history and we saw how many fantastic and great accomplishments have been done by people who were actually drunk. And we wanted to make a celebration of alcohol, and that developed into a more ambitious project of making a film about the whole nature of alcohol, also the dark sides.
And then in the process of writing, we again wanted to elevate this to be about more than just drinking. We wanted it to be about life, in all humbleness. We wanted it to be a life-affirming film. The word “spirit” does not only mean alcohol. And making it a movie about four guys who’ve lost the appetite for their lives, their curiosity, the element of risk, the element of exploration, was something that came to us when we decided to put this at a school amongst schoolteachers.
Q: Mads, is acting drunk, performing as drunk, fun or a real challenge?
Mikkelsen: It was fun. I mean, it is intoxicating to stand there with four of your good friends and behave like kids. It catches on, even though we were not drinking in those scenes. Thomas would have a hard time trying to get through to us because we became intoxicated by the scenes. But it’s also a challenge. And for that, we had a nice and good boot camp before, where we shot each other on video. We tested out the philosophy about .05, .08, and we noticed that while we were in the situation, it felt kind of normal. When watching the video later, you could realize that we did behave differently.
Q: Are the two of you surprised that the final dance number has become the signature scene of the movie?
M: Not now, but if you asked me while we were in the midst of shooting, absolutely, I was. And Thomas can elaborate on this, I was quite reluctant. Not that I didn’t want to dance in a film, I just had a hard time picturing how we could pull it off without coming across as pretentious. It’s a realistic film. So in my world we should heighten it. We should be a drunken man’s fantasy, something that was standing out of the film.
And Thomas was insisting on no, this man gets up and he starts flying. So we went back and forth quite a few times. And luckily I gave in and he was absolutely a hundred-percent right. But if you asked me a year ago, I didn’t see that coming. When I see the film now it all makes perfect sense.
V: We’ve always been nervous about this scene. It’s a bit of a stretch having a teacher suddenly being a great dancer, but emotionally it just made so much sense to all of us. And I always pursued it, I felt it was so right that he becomes weightless.
All these youngsters are weightless. And at this time in life, everyone is yearning for that time, for the weightlessness of youth. Now Tobias is a realityrules kind of guy — Mads is too, to some extent, and I am too. We really had to work out how to prepare this so it became believable. So if you look at the scene itself and actually the whole story of Mads’ dance, it’s all about his reluctance, the character’s reluctance to dance.
Q: Mads, there’s such a sense of catharsis for the character in that dance. Would you say the same was true for you?
M: Those two days of shooting were maybe the most meaningful days of shooting I’ve ever had. But not because I finally got the chance to dance, because I’ve never been ambitious about doing that in a film, but because it was such an important ending for a variety of reasons.
Q: The movie has been a big commercial hit there in Denmark. Thomas, why do you think audiences are responding so strongly to the movie?
V: Well, this movie comes from the heart. There’s a great sense of honesty and an element of love on screen amongst those guys. I think it speaks to people’s hearts, basically. It also speaks to a world of confinement and a world of death and bankruptcy. And there’s an element of riot against that in our movie. There are a lot of people dancing, holding each other, drinking, at odd times, allowing again the element of the uncontrollable to take over their lives. Whereas all over the place we’re living very controlled and confined lives. And then Mads is really good. The actors are really good. And I’m OK. And it all adds up.