Rolling Stone The Year of Magical Drinking: Mads Mikkelsen and Thomas Vinterberg on ‘Another Round’
The filmmaker and star of the Oscar-nominated Danish film open up on the origins of their alcohol-soaked tragicomedy, the art of acting “drunk,” and that climactic dance sequence
By Samuel Goldwyn Films
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 that would have made the Freed Unit burst into spontaneous applause. It’s a d
Another Round Movie Review: Mads Mikkelsen s Film Is An Intoxicating Brew
Another Round Movie Review: Mads Mikkelsen s Film Is An Intoxicating Brew
Another Round Movie Review: Mikkelsen s principal co-actors - Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang and Lars Ranthe - are just as steady when they act drunk and out of control in the film s most crucial scenes.
Mads Mikkelsen in a still from the film (courtesy theofficialmads)
(Beginning a series of reviews of the frontrunners for the Best International Film Oscar. Fifteen films have made it to the next round of voting that will take place between March 5 and 10. The Oscar nominations are due to be announced on March 15 and the ceremony is scheduled for April 25.)
I’m always baffled that Danish movies consistently push the envelope while Canada gets, uh,
Target Number One. Denmark and Canada have similar government agencies supporting filmmaking. What gives? Probably the fact most of our talent emigrates to the U.S. while Denmark nurtures the likes of Lars Von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg and Susanne Bier, veritable forces in contemporary cinema, at home. (Xavier Dolan, you say? He probably needs less nurturing.)
The Danish formula, if there is one, is simple: take an important current issue, find a new angle. That’s how you get something like
Another Round, a well-rounded drama by Vinterberg about day-drinking and the misery it addresses. Here’s the twist: the film doesn’t denounce it. In fact,