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🎙️ EPISODE 347: 04.16.2021
So the story goes. I don't think I quite hit at what I wanted to say in the audio review. Par for the course, 'round these parts, my friends. And while I'll attempt at hitting the nail here, it's a struggle. I didn't get into it, but I've had some battles with the ole booze, that ole bubbly-wobbly boozehound life. Nothing TOO demented or longitudinal. My issue is that I'm prone to binge-drinking when I do decide to crack one open. The original Danish title of this is Druk ("binge-drinking" in that language, somehow; words? am I right?). And while this isn't a perfect movie by any means – it mainly struggles with smooth plot transitions – it's one of the best visual interpretations, on a symbolic level, of the act of consuming alcohol in the 21st century. |
Druk is such a better title than
Another Round, which adds an unearned if not wholly absent levity to the experience. This film gets pretty fucking dark. And while it ends on an uptick (the Mads Mikkelsen dance-off with himself you might have heard about) there's still an inherent madness or mania that is impossible to ignore. What fuels these good times is unsustainable. "This country is insane with drinking," Mikkelsen's onscreen wife Anika (Maria Bonnevie) says. You can sub in a many, many other countries and that still rings true. When perpetual boredom and dissatisfaction becomes the default state, despite (or perhaps because of) our endless distractions, why wouldn't or shouldn't we turn to perception-altering chemicals? This is the heart of the movie and its the heart of modern alcohol culture at-large, I feel. It touches on this
so specifically (the role of drinking in modern times); I can't think of another film which does so. If I were a more pretentious try-hard critic, I might write something like "alcohol is the real main character of
Another Round."
Performance-wise and stylistically, this nears perfection. Thomas Vinterberg deserves the Best Director nomination here, and the cast is top-notch (Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe, and Magnus Millang round out the crew). The only real blemish, in my eyes, was the forceful progression of the story. The jumps into each of the three measures (a steady 0.05 blood alcohol level, the ~1+ BAC increase, and – finally – full-on blackout) felt abrupt. Perhaps this is meant to echo the impaired decision-making process brought on by booze, but it was one of the rare times I might argue in favor of a longer running time. You want to spend time with these guys and their experiment. It's a credit, in a sense. This is right on the cusp of a 9 for me; I'll hedge with the highest of 8s as I look forward to going back into the Extended Vinterverse some day.
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