Another Round (4/5 Stars)

 

“All things in moderation, including moderation.” – Oscar Wilde

The lake game involves teams of high schoolers racing around a lake lugging a case of beers and chugging them at various waypoints. There are rules that differentiate a kid puking on his own or as part of his team. This is a tradition that has gone on perhaps forever in this Danish town. The last time, the drunk kids got up to some shenanigans while taking public transportation home (a police officer was handcuffed to a railing). The teachers in the school discuss imposing a zero-tolerance policy concerning alcohol. The atmosphere in the room is not conducive to the idea. No one makes an argument for alcohol, but there is some disbelief that the policy could ever be successfully enforced. What is going on here? If something is indefensible, why does everyone keep doing it?

The movie goes about making this argument. Four of the male teachers meet for dinner. They are all in different stages in their life but something seems to be missing. More than the others, Martin (played by Mads Mikkelsen) seems to be in a rut with his teaching and his marriage. The psychology professor brings up a Norwegian philosopher that posited human beings have a deficit of body alcohol content of about 0.5, which would be about two glasses of wine. An idea is hatched to conduct an experiment, what would happen if each man kept his body alcohol content at 0.5 and stopped at 8pm to avoid the next day’s hangover. This is how Ernest Hemingway worked one observes.

Perhaps because the movie is from Denmark (directed by Thomas Vinterberg), it moves along at a slower pace than the normal American fare. One can get use to it though, and the alcohol that is being imbibed looks great. The actor Mads Mikkelsen does a great job with acting on the cusp of buzzed. It turns out that drinking during the day actually helps some of the teachers with their work. Mads becomes a more interesting history teacher. He has loosened up. The music teacher becomes more creative. It is all such a success so much that the men decide to drink even more. The consequences are obvious. They drink so much that they lose control and make fools of themselves. The wives are not happy and their children are embarrassed. How the movie ends however is worth the ticket price just for the one scene. The movie perfectly captures that moment where all the problems of drinking are forgotten and replaced with a sort of muddled consciousness akin to childhood. It will make you want to dance.

Plenty of movies about substance abuse follow a well-worn formula, which generally ends with people admitting that they have a problem and seeking help (or dying). “Another Round” is a bit different in that the movie’s intends to insist that drinking alcohol can be a good thing, perhaps better than not drinking at all. By the end of the movie, after all the inevitable bad things that can happen do happen, everyone is still drinking. In fact, the title of this movie may be one of those titles that are never spoken, just thought between the characters (like “You Can Count On Me” and “Goodbye Solo”). The three remaining friends are enjoying a post-funeral drink when one man rhetorically asks what their dead friend would do next. The question is not actually answered, but I’m pretty sure it would have been “Another Round”.