another-round-film
Blog Mental

Something to Watch – Film – Another Round (2020)

 

I’m not sure how the film Another Round originally turned up on my radar through a recent article on the BBC brought it back to my attention. Anyway, I watched it and it was a delight.

 

Another Round is a Danish film that follows four friends in the 40s and working in the same school, who make a pact to maintain a certain blood alcohol level every day in the hope it will improve or at least shake their lives up.

 

The movie stars Mads Mikkelsen, as Martin (who you may know as the villain in the Bond film, Casino Royale, or Hannibal Lector from the Hannibal TV series) a middle-aged man going nowhere in his job, ignored by his teenage kids and unable to speak to his wife who works nights. Depressed, feeling invisible and nostalgic for his youth, he is wondering where his life has gone.

 

Commonly you engage with a film when you sympathise or see something of yourself in the characters. This is true of this film for me. The protagonists are white men in their 40s at different places in their life who meet up and share their woes over good food and good wine. Something I’ve only been able to do once in the last year during one of the UK’s brief rest bites from lockdown. The early scene in a restaurant where they hatch the experiment is especially evocative.

 

The film walks a delicate balance between the often hilarity of alcohol and its very dark side. The film is also very much about friendship and the film hits its heights when the four friends are on screen together. The bar scene where they decide to up the ante seems like a piece of nostalgia at the moment.

 

With lots of awards recognition, the film may be popping up on your radar. I would recommend giving it a watch and also for the final “jazz ballet” dance number at the end as Martin rediscovers his joie de vivre.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.