Another Round – How’d I Miss This?
There are a lot of movies out there, but seeing some of them way after their release makes me wonder, “How’d I miss this?”
Malaise is a hard thing to capture on screen. It’s quiet and gradual, internal and typically subtle. It’s a realization that leads to a decrease in energy, an increase in depression, and the end of a protagonist’s progression. That is, unless your protagonist has this face:
That is Mads Mikkelsen, who you might recognize from any of his many big blockbuster roles.
Should we do a top-five real quick? Ok fine, let’s do a top-five real quick.
Here are The Top Five Mads Mikkelsen Big-Budget Blockbuster Roles Because Danish Independent Cinema Doesn’t Pay, Bro:
5. Dr. Voller in Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny. Remember this? It was fine. Remember him in it? Yeah, me neither really. He was a Nazi, I think? They went back in time… it was a whole thing.
4. Gellert Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Remember this? It was not fine. Remember him in it because they had to get rid of the original actor who portrayed this movie’s fascist villain (sensing a theme here)? Him and Jude Law dueled… it was also a whole thing.
3. Galen Erso in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Look, this movie rules. And while his character actually has one of the lamer roles in the story (Codeword: Stardust? Get the fuck out of here with that), he does have a very cool name (Lucasflim, you did it again!) AND it’s one of the few times where Mikkelsen doesn’t have to play a psychotic murderer. Speaking of which…
2. Kaecilius in Doctor Strange. I mean just look at my guy, he is cooooooking. No one is having more fun in this movie than the Mad Dog and as a former gymnast and dancer, you can kind of believe him as a reality-bending master of the mystic (and martial) arts.
Honorable Mention: Hannibal on Hannibal. Did I watch any of the 39 episodes of this show? I did not. Do I remember hearing how beautifully deranged the cannibalistic feasts were on the show? I most certainly do.
1. Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. Now with all due respect to his role as Sir Tristan in 2004’s King Arthur (the one with Clive Owen as Arthur and Keira Knightley as a Celtic warrior Guinevere and NOT 2017’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword where Eric Bana, who I always confuse with Clive Owen, play’s Arthur’s father Uther Pendragon (sidenote: David Beckham is also in the latter as a character named “Trigger”)), Le Chiffre–and his bloody tears–is the first time most American audiences saw his withdrawn Nordic face in a major motion picture. Well, sometimes he’s sad, other times he smirks devilishly while torturing Daniel Craig’s Bond by pummeling his undercarriage with a metal weight on a rope in what can only be described as one of the oddest torture scenes ever committed to film.
Oh, second honorable mention: The time he played the bad guy in Rhianna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money” video, a role he has a soft spot for because, as he put it, “after all, I am the bitch.” What a legend.
Ok did we do it? I think we did it. Back to the sad, sad man.
2020’s Another Round tells the story of four teachers in Copenhagen who’ve reached different types of stasis in each of their lives. Some are married fathers in their 40s and 50s, while others are divorced or single men of similar age, all of whom are simply… existing without much change or excitement on the horizon. The youngest of the bunch, a 40-year-old father of four, introduces a philosophical idea he reads about online that theorizes that humans are born with 0.5% BAC deficiency and in order to truly live life, one must maintain that 0.5% BAC throughout the day by drinking lightly, but constantly.
As you can imagine, good doesn’t come from this. Well, actually at first it does. They all seem more alive, more engaged, more… themselves or the versions of themselves they wish they were or believe they used to be. But as the four men continue to increase their booze intake, going to 0.8% and then 1%, they come down the other side–none more so than Mikkelsen’s high school history teacher, Martin.
This is a man who you watch in bed all-but-fail to even get his wife’s attention as she breezes through the room en route to another night shift. This is a man whose students call a meeting with Martin and their parents so they can confront him on his apathetic teaching and their fear that he’s not adequately preparing them for their final exams. This is a man whose own kids barely register his existence. And this is all while looking like Mads Mikkselsen, who is many things, but easy to ignore… maybe not so much.
As all of these events occur, you watch him slip slowly into a state of continuous melancholy, until finally breaking down at a nice restaurant with his four friends, which is when we learn about the theory that will set them on their course.
Eventually though–after we watch our hero rise and become the engaged, charming, and deliberate teacher, dad, and husband of the year–Martin goes down the other side, landing battered and blacked out in front of his neighbor’s house and without his wife and kids after they call him out for his reckless behavior. His life completely falls apart and he realizes that what he feared so much about his existence before the group’s experiment–the consistency, the routine of it all–is actually what he misses the most.
But so much of this is done through Mikkelsen’s kind and lonely eyes and tepid attempts at expressing love towards his family. To say that this is surprising to see a man at this point in his life going through such things would be ignorant–we all have an uncle or a coworker or a friend’s parent that walks this line–but to see it in such a painfully quiet and searing fashion is why Mikkelsen has become one of the most distinctive actors of the past 20 years.
Eventually, Martin invites his separated wife to meet to discuss plans for their son’s birthday only to surprise her by asking her to return home and remind her that they still have many years left and can still grow old together (she slams a glass of house white and leaves). At this point, he thinks he’s at his lowest. But then he learns that the saddest and loneliest of the four friends killed himself. And at this point, Martin loses any hope that was hiding in some far off corner of his heart. The end.
—
Well, that’s how it could’ve ended. But that’s not the message of Another Round. In fact, it required a serious bit of tragedy to completely redirect the film’s intent. Writer/director Thomas Vinterberg originally wanted to frame the story around all the great things that have been accomplished by people throughout history who were drunk. But after one of his daughters was killed by a drunk driver, he decided to do something odd: he reworked the script to instead follow a sad, middle aged man who looks for and then finds meaning in his life again after hitting rock bottom.
Martin and his friends pick themselves up. They help their students pass their exams. One of them rededicates himself to his wife and family, another starts a new relationship for the first time in years. And our protagonist, well he accepts his fate and prepares to engage with his new reality… right before his separated wife texts him and tells her she misses him as much as he misses her. We watch him receive the texts while at lunch with his friends and we watch him register what this means. But does Martin double pump his fists and scream out “Come On!” in exaltation, à la Tashi Duncan? No, of course not. It’s not that kind of movie.
Instead, he does this:
After running out of the restaurant to greet their celebrating students, Martin and his friends let out every bit of angst and anger that’s boiled up inside of them as they’ve gone on their quests to rediscover who each of them are at these new points in their lives. They sing. They dance (some better than others). They drink countless bottles of champagne. And just when you think the remaining friends are either going back inside for lunch or sliding back towards their alcoholic ways, Martin finally let’s go and soars into the harbor — proving that joy, unlike malaise, is easy to capture onscreen, even if just for a weightless moment.
