Mikkelsen excels in Thomas Vinterberg’s profound yet playful midlife crisis tale about four high-school teachers seeking a better life on the lash
Tragedy, comedy and Kierkegaard collide like the highs and lows of an alcohol binge in Thomas Vinterberg’s latest, which won the Bafta for best film not in the English language, and Oscar for best international feature. Mischievously unruly in tone (“scandalous” is Vinterberg’s preferred word), yet shot through with a flinty shard of sadness, it’s the Danish director’s finest and most personal film since 1998’s Festen – a heady cocktail of ecstasy and grief, buoyed by a superb ensemble cast. At the centre of its maddening spell is a magnificently modulated performance by Mads Mikkelsen, who excelled in Vinterberg’s 2012 drama The Hunt, and offers here the performance of a lifetime in a role that sees him dancing (literally) through the heart of darkness.
Tragedy, comedy and Kierkegaard collide like the highs and lows of an alcohol binge in Thomas Vinterberg’s latest, which won the Bafta for best film not in the English language, and Oscar for best international feature. Mischievously unruly in tone (“scandalous” is Vinterberg’s preferred word), yet shot through with a flinty shard of sadness, it’s the Danish director’s finest and most personal film since 1998’s Festen – a heady cocktail of ecstasy and grief, buoyed by a superb ensemble cast. At the centre of its maddening spell is a magnificently modulated performance by Mads Mikkelsen, who excelled in Vinterberg’s 2012 drama The Hunt, and offers here the performance of a lifetime in a role that sees him dancing (literally) through the heart of darkness.
- 7/4/2021
- by Mark Kermode
- The Guardian - Film News
If you’ve heard about Another Round, the Oscar-nominated Danish film starring Mads Mikkelsen, you probably know about the Dance. It happens at the end of writer-director Thomas Vinterberg’s tragicomedy about four middle-aged high school teachers who attempt an experiment in magical drinking; entire features and paeans have already been written about it. Sitting on a park bench as his students whoop and holler near a pier, Mikkelsen’s history professor tentatively starts doing a two-step. Then he bursts into the sort of musical dance routine — leaping, twirling, sliding...
- 4/15/2021
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
Nominated in both the International Feature Oscar and the Best Director Oscar categories, Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round is a life-affirming film that uses an experimentation with alcohol as a means to propel the drama. Throughout, there are elements of tragedy and comedy in a story Vinterberg has called an “untamable beast.” It’s all capped off by a show-stopping sequence that’s hopeful, joyous and also somewhat open-ended. The team approached it with careful consideration, as Vinterberg and Mikkelsen told us during Deadline’s Contenders Film: The Nominees all-day event.
Mikkelsen, who dusted off his dance shoes for that scene, says it was subject to much discussion and some hesitation. He told me, “Let’s put it this way, I was a little nervous that it might come across as pretentious, or that we would miss the target somehow.” Vinterberg, said Mikkelsen, was “a little more convinced than I...
Mikkelsen, who dusted off his dance shoes for that scene, says it was subject to much discussion and some hesitation. He told me, “Let’s put it this way, I was a little nervous that it might come across as pretentious, or that we would miss the target somehow.” Vinterberg, said Mikkelsen, was “a little more convinced than I...
- 4/10/2021
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
Thomas Vinterberg helmed the Danish film “Another Round,” starring Mads Mikkelsen as one of four friends who partake in an experiment with alcohol. The film was just nominated at the Oscars for Best International Feature Film and Vinterberg himself was nominated for Best Director.
Vinterberg spoke with Gold Derby senior editor Daniel Montgomery before the Oscar nominations announcement about the origins of “Another Round,” working with Mikkelsen and what it would mean to win the Academy Award for Denmark. Watch the exclusive interview above and read the complete transcript below.
SEEThomas Vinterberg (‘Another Round’) joins starry roster of Best Director Oscar nominees for non-English language films
Gold Derby: [The film] felt different to me than most American films that I usually see about alcohol, where it’s usually either pure comedy or tragedy. Here, the alcohol feels sort of secondary to the deeper reasons why these men feel lost in their lives.
Vinterberg spoke with Gold Derby senior editor Daniel Montgomery before the Oscar nominations announcement about the origins of “Another Round,” working with Mikkelsen and what it would mean to win the Academy Award for Denmark. Watch the exclusive interview above and read the complete transcript below.
SEEThomas Vinterberg (‘Another Round’) joins starry roster of Best Director Oscar nominees for non-English language films
Gold Derby: [The film] felt different to me than most American films that I usually see about alcohol, where it’s usually either pure comedy or tragedy. Here, the alcohol feels sort of secondary to the deeper reasons why these men feel lost in their lives.
- 3/20/2021
- by Kevin Jacobsen
- Gold Derby
Daniel Craig and Mads Mikkelsen first met casting the 2006 film “Casino Royale,” which was Craig’s first turn at James Bond. Mikkelsen recalls their initial conversation at costume fitting and what he thought would be an audition. It was a crazy day, one Craig compared to “herding cats.” The two were taking a smoke break together when director Martin Campbell came up and said he didn’t need to see Mikkelsen, he had the part. Reminiscing with Craig, Mikkelsen recalled, “You took a drag of your cigarette and said the famous words, ‘Who did you fuck, I did six casting for this?’ That was our first meeting.”
Hearing this, Craig laughed and noted: “I can’t believe how witty I was!”
The actors sat down (virtually) with one another for the inaugural episode of “Dream Teams,” Variety’s new series that pairs collaborators who caught lighting in a bottle. Having...
Hearing this, Craig laughed and noted: “I can’t believe how witty I was!”
The actors sat down (virtually) with one another for the inaugural episode of “Dream Teams,” Variety’s new series that pairs collaborators who caught lighting in a bottle. Having...
- 3/5/2021
- by Jenelle Riley
- Variety Film + TV
The Thomas Vinterberg Danish comedy-drama “Another Round” has one of the most talked-about endings of the year, in which actor Mads Mikkelsen embarks on an exhilarating freestyle dance on a pier amongst his friends and former students. And while that scene was difficult for the former gymnast and dancer, who admits he was sore for days, it was actually the beginning of the movie that Mikkelsen cites as being his biggest challenge in making the film.
Mikkelsen stars as Martin, a teacher who finds his life, career and marriage in a rut. He and his three fellow teachers and friends discuss the work of psychiatrist Finn Skårderud, who theorized that humans naturally have too low a blood alcohol content, and embark on an experiment to raise theirs. In short, they agree to be drunk during the day. This is discussed at the 40th birthday party of their friend Nicolai, a...
Mikkelsen stars as Martin, a teacher who finds his life, career and marriage in a rut. He and his three fellow teachers and friends discuss the work of psychiatrist Finn Skårderud, who theorized that humans naturally have too low a blood alcohol content, and embark on an experiment to raise theirs. In short, they agree to be drunk during the day. This is discussed at the 40th birthday party of their friend Nicolai, a...
- 3/5/2021
- by Jenelle Riley
- Variety Film + TV
Alcohol is an integral part of many cultures around the world, but as explored in Thomas Vinterberg’s latest feature Another Round—which has been selected as the Danish Oscar submission—Denmark has a particularly bad drinking problem. In the opening scene, a group of rowdy teenagers take part in a ‘Lake Race’ a common real-life tradition that Vinterberg saw both of his two daughters partake in during high school. The teens challenge each other to race around a lake in groups while downing a case of beer. If one of them vomits, time is added to their score; if they all vomit in unison, time is deducted. But surely the adults are better behaved?
High school teachers Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), Nikolaj (Magnus Millang), and Peter (Lars Ranthe) appear to be more mature than their students, but their midlife crises prompt them to embark on a rather juvenile ‘social experiment.
High school teachers Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), Nikolaj (Magnus Millang), and Peter (Lars Ranthe) appear to be more mature than their students, but their midlife crises prompt them to embark on a rather juvenile ‘social experiment.
- 12/7/2020
- by Orla Smith
- The Film Stage
That esteemed contemporary sage Homer Simpson once observed that alcohol was “the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.” The idea behind that joke permeates “Another Round” (“Druk”), the latest from director Thomas Vinterberg (“Far From the Madding Crowd”), a film that centers on drinking to excess but winds up being more about mid-life crises and less a jeremiad about the evils of demon rum.
Working from an incisive and insightful screenplay he wrote with Tobias Lindholm, Vinterberg crafts another drama that presents the best and worst of human nature as paths to be explored. His characters don’t necessarily choose the right one, and sometimes we’re left to wonder which selection they’ve made, but Vinterberg — in marked contrast to his fellow Dogme 95 filmmaker Lars von Trier — at least concedes that redemption might exist.
Mads Mikkelsen stars as Martin, a middle-aged schoolteacher in a middle-aged...
Working from an incisive and insightful screenplay he wrote with Tobias Lindholm, Vinterberg crafts another drama that presents the best and worst of human nature as paths to be explored. His characters don’t necessarily choose the right one, and sometimes we’re left to wonder which selection they’ve made, but Vinterberg — in marked contrast to his fellow Dogme 95 filmmaker Lars von Trier — at least concedes that redemption might exist.
Mads Mikkelsen stars as Martin, a middle-aged schoolteacher in a middle-aged...
- 9/20/2020
- by Alonso Duralde
- The Wrap
If you find yourself needing to latch onto an obscure scientific theory to reinvigorate your energy level and live your life as more than a sleepwalking zombie, you’re probably not ready to actually confront the real problem. We know this to be true of the quartet at the center of Thomas Vinterberg’s effective, cathartic drama Druk (known in English as Another Round), since our first impression of Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), Peter (Lars Ranthe), Nikolaj (Magnus Millang), and especially Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) is that they have lost their spark. Sexually, intellectually, physically, emotionally—whatever spark you can describe in words, they’ve lost it. Call it a mid-life crisis if you want. Call it evidence for needing a therapist like it is. Or, as they decide, retrieve that long-lost courage at the bottom of a bottle.
Don’t go calling them alcoholics, though (at least not yet). The...
Don’t go calling them alcoholics, though (at least not yet). The...
- 9/19/2020
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
‘Another Round’ Review: Mads Mikkelsen as a Danish High-School Teacher Who Become a Drunk…On Purpose
The Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg came up in the Dogme 95 movement, and he’s sort of like Lars von Trier if von Trier, beneath the radical flourishes, had become a conventional-minded director of mildly outré TV movies. (Netflix should snap him up.) In a Vinterberg film, there’s the hook, which is often provocative, and then there’s the execution, which tends to be overly telegraphed and a touch plodding and not fully psychologically convincing. Yet even after 20 years, Vinterberg is still wedded to the Dogme mannerisms — the no-frills camerawork, the improvvy austerity — that now have all the aesthetic frisson of a polished piece of Scandinavian bedroom furniture. His latest film, “Another Round,” might be described as , a “socially relevant” trifle that keeps undercutting itself.
It’s about four middle-aged friends who are teachers at the same high school, and it centers on Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), who was once a...
It’s about four middle-aged friends who are teachers at the same high school, and it centers on Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), who was once a...
- 9/14/2020
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
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