Another Round: a tragicomedy about day-drinking and never-ending hangovers

From time to time, a specific Mads Mikkelsen meme appears on my timeline. The image is of the Danish actor, sat stoic for a Star Wars junket, with a caption of “End of 2016 mood: Mads Mikkelsen opening a full bottle of vodka in the middle of a Rogue One interview”. A tweet of this went viral with 9,500 shares and a Tumblr post received 100,000 notes. Except, the alleged alcohol is really a glass container of water, the overpriced kind that’s recognisable to journalists who attend hotel events. On social media, few questioned the meme’s validity; to many, it’s just funny that Mikkelsen would drink on the job.

Thomas Vinterberg also recognised the comic potential. In the Danish director’s 11th film, Another Round, a tragicomedy about day-drinking, Mikkelsen stars as Martin, a history teacher who sips booze in between classes. When sober, Martin struggles to maintain the children’s attention; with Dutch courage, he successfully elucidates the syllabus with the contagious enthusiasm of a loose-lipped chatterbox dishing out gossip at a Wetherspoons. After a while, you conclude that every teacher’s lounge should be supplied with glass bottles of vodka.

“But it’s definitely water,” says Vinterberg, a bit confused, when I show him the meme over Zoom. The 51-year-old director, who also co-created Dogme 95 with Lars von Trier, had never seen the viral image before this moment, but understands why the internet – not just Hannibal “Fannibals” – adores Mikkelsen. “Mads is a very beautiful, strong, capable, great-looking guy,” the filmmaker notes. “But I thought it was interesting to strip him down to this vulnerable man in his midlife crisis, because he’s got a huge capacity as that kind of actor as well.”

Martin doesn’t experiment with booze alone. He and three other teachers hear of a psychiatrist, Finn Skårderud, who theorised that humans function best with 0.05 per cent alcohol in their bloodstream – when they adopt this level of drunkenness 24/7, it boosts their lives by considerably more than 0.05 per cent. In the early stages, anyway. “This film is about the uncontrollable,” Vinterberg explains. “It’s a riot against a mediocre life. It’s about what happens when you put the bottle to your lips. You might get laid. You might get beaten up. But at least it’s beyond your control.”

In a separate call, also in January, Mikkelsen speaks to me from London, where he’s filming Fantastic Beasts 3 after replacing Johnny Depp mid-shoot. The 55-year-old’s filmography ranges from blockbusters (Casino Royale, Doctor Strange) to arthouse dramas (Flickering Lights, Men & Chicken). Even a pandemic doesn’t change that. I ask him if actors, by profession, seek what Vinterberg refers to as the uncontrollable. After all, when the camera is rolling, actors surrender their mind and body to the director – is that the same pleasure one gets from a shot of whiskey?

“When you hit that perfect note in acting, yes, it’s like losing control,” Mikkelsen says. “But it rarely happens. Actors know there’s a camera, and you can’t hit that person for real. You have to pretend you’re losing control. On the rare occasion everything’s playing the right tune, then you lose control, and it feels absolutely wonderful. It’s being in the zone. Whether you’re Federer playing the perfect tennis game, or you’re nailing a scene, or you’re drinking two beers, it feels like, ‘Now it’s working!’”

Martin and his friends eventually face a never-ending hangover. As their tolerance builds up, so too does the number of vodka shots; colleagues and students also notice when Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), stinking of booze, stumbles headfirst into a wall. Go back a few scenes, though, and their slightly drunken lifestyle truly works. “We all know that a few glasses of wine or two beers will lift the conversation and create an atmosphere of more creativity,” Mikkelsen says. “You might be brave enough to make that phone call you didn’t dare do yesterday.” But isn’t it ultimately about addiction? “It’s never been a film about going too far. It’s a film about trying to enhance life.”

“It’s a riot against a mediocre life. It’s about what happens when you put the bottle to your lips. You might get laid. You might get beaten up. But at least it’s beyond your control” – Thomas Vinterberg

Vinterberg’s films often depict unusual pacts. In Dear Wendy, a gang of pacificists all agree to purchase guns; in The Commune, which was inspired by the director’s childhood, multiple families move into a single household. Off-screen, there was the formation of Dogme 95: Vinterberg and von Trier allegedly scribbled down the movement’s “Vows of Chastity” in 45 minutes. The camera must be hand-held. The director can’t be credited. No props, no filters, no special lighting. There were ten ridiculous rules, each designed to usher in a new wave of filmmaking.

“My parents moved into a commune and broke the rules for how families are supposed to live,” Vinterberg explains. “It’s that feeling of moving on thin ice. Dogme, career-wise, was suicidal, but doing it together, hand in hand, was a fantastic sensation. It was the ultimate solidarity. It was the opposite of loneliness. It was the sense of togetherness, to a very intense degree, which I really loved, in both Dogme and (in the story of Another Round). Those are similar projects. It’s about imposing risk into real life, to revitalise your life.”

In 1998, Vinterberg became an overnight sensation when Festen, the first Dogme film, won the Jury Prize at Cannes. Less fondly remembered is Vinterberg’s follow-up, It’s All About Love, a 2003 sci-fi starring Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Danes. It cost $10 million and made under $500,000. Cannes rejected it. At the Sundance premiere, Danes reportedly cried in the theatre when audience members booed the ending.

It’s All About Love is, admittedly, preposterous. In a climate crisis, human bodies start levitating for no reason and tap water turns to ice during summer months. In a climactic shootout, Phoenix battles a number of Claire Danes clones, all of whom are ice-skating. Yet it does dystopian weirdness and visual poetry so much better than The Leftovers. Or, at least, that’s how I feel. No one really remembers it, not even Vinterberg. He’s stunned when I remind him that the apocalyptic film was set in 2021.

“I forgot It’s All About Love was 2021,” Vinterberg laughs. “Wasn’t it reasonably prophetic, that film? Dead people in the street. An ice age. I consider that film my troubled child in the sense that I love it dearly, but it behaves strangely, socially. It was a film concerned with environmental problems. And I guess we were right.”

Vinterberg’s career didn’t fully recover until he cast Mikkelsen in 2012’s The Hunt. The pair had already met on Mikkelsen’s first acting gig, a 1996 short called Blomsterfangen on which Vinterberg was a crew member. “We’re friends,” Mikkelsen says of their working relationship. “We don’t have to be polite when we’re disagreeing.”

“It’s never been a film about going too far. It’s a film about trying to enhance life” – Mads Mikkelsen

In The Hunt, Mikkelsen plays another teacher, this one falsely accused of sexual assault by a vengeful pupil. It competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, where Mikkelsen won Best Actor, and was nominated for an Oscar; if released in today’s climate, the reaction may not be quite so universally positive. While Vinterberg doesn’t completely agree, he notes of the timing, “There was a need in society for a life-affirming film (like Another Round). It was needed in my life as well.”

On The Hunt, Vinterberg started experimenting with booze at his writing desk. “Drinking cognac made me less self-aware, and opened me up,” the director explains. “It made me more courageous and more in the moment. It really does work! But I have a family and a career. I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and I’ve had to learn to write without alcohol as well.” He adds, “It’s All About Love was written pretty dry. It would have been great for that movie if I had been drinking a bit more.”

On Another Round, there was zero booze on set, partly because one of the other actors is seven years sober. To prepare, Mikkelsen studied YouTube videos (he describes them as “Russian people going for it”) and hung out with cast members in a drinking boot camp; they filmed themselves, like Big Brother in a pub, and analysed their body language afterwards. “We did that for a few days,” Mikkelsen says, “and the rest was just from our own experiences”.

If similar pleasures are derived from acting and alcohol, can you be addicted to acting? Are method actors taking that escapism to another level? “Method acting is a misunderstood concept,” Mikkelsen says.

“Method acting is one of the most boring ideas in history. It’s doing the same thing over and over again, and trying to recreate a certain emotion. It’s very technical. The whole thing about gaining 200 lbs or living on a mountain for three years – that’s nothing to do with method acting. That’s research. You can take research to a degree where it’s insane and stupid. I love acting, but I think if somebody asked me to play on Barcelona’s team with Messi, I wouldn’t turn around and miss acting.”

However, things do get Messi in Another Round. In a drunken dance scene, Mikkelsen kicks a can of beer so perfectly in the air, I wonder if he really does harbour secret footballing ambitions. “The very first take, I kicked it absolutely immaculately,” Mikkelsen beams with pride. “But it went 20 metres in the air and never came down, so the camera never caught it. We had to do it a couple of times. That was a moment where it was like – BANG! – spot on.”

Mikkelsen’s burst of jazz ballet is by far the most discussed sequence of Another Round. The mesmerising few minutes – a homage to classic Hollywood musicals and also your excitable, clumsy mate on a night out – is scored to Scarlet Pleasures’s “What a Life”. Mikkelsen, light on his toes, careful not to spill a drop, acrobatically flails his limbs with a drink in his hand. What a life, indeed. “We tried a Billie Eilish song, but the rights were too expensive,” Vinterberg admits. “We were very nervous. Is it far-fetched that a teacher ends up like that? But I’m glad that feeling of ecstasy comes across.”

“I love acting, but I think if somebody asked me to play on Barcelona’s team with Messi, I wouldn’t turn around and miss acting” – Mads Mikkelsen

Mikkelsen was a professional gymnast and ballet performer until Nicolas Winding Refn cast him as the lead of Pusher in 1996. “I’ve never insisted like, ‘Come on, guys, why can’t I dance in Pusher?’” says Mikkelsen on why he’s never danced on screen before. “My idea was that we should lift it into a magical moment. But Thomas wanted it straight-forward and realistic. I gave in, and he made it fantastic.”

As the song continues over the credits, the words “FOR IDA” appear. A few days into filming, Vinterberg’s 19-year-old daughter died in a car accident and production was paused. She was meant to play Mikkelsen’s daughter; her friends were supposed to depict her character’s classmates. For that and many other reasons, Another Round is evidently more personal to Vinterberg than his director-for-hire gigs like Far from the Madding Crowd. “Another Round is written by me, it’s full of my friends, it was shot at my daughter’s school,” Vinterberg says. “It’s a very intimate and personal thing. It’s very different from Far from the Madding Crowd.”

Since Another Round premiered at last year’s TIFF, it’s been a crowd-pleaser – and not just in Denmark where it was 2020’s biggest box-office hit. The film won Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenwriter and Best Actor at the European Film Awards. At the London Film Festival, it picked up Best Film. A few months after our conversation, it will go onto scoop Best International Film at the Oscars and be at the centre of a bidding war for an English-language remake – Leonardo DiCaprio will reportedly play the lead.

Still, with such a provocative premise, don’t you want a bit of a backlash? “I find it juvenile and pretentious if you want to provoke people,” Mikkelsen responds, before I can finish my question. “It’s completely uninteresting to make a film that’s just provocative. I’m happy people saw the film like this – a tribute to life.”

During the pandemic, Vinterberg’s been writing a TV show. He promises, “You will definitely see similarities with It’s All About Love.” Given that the mumblecore movement arose from America’s financial crash, could COVID-19 spark the return of Dogme 95, albeit renamed Dogme 2021? “I don’t think Dogme will come back, pandemic or not,” Vinterberg says. “There was a risk connected to making Dogme. It was a revolt. It was risky. People called me and said, ‘Are you crazy? You’re destroying your career. You’re letting that mad man (Lars von Trier) destroy your career with you.’ I was warned every day, ‘You’re destroying cinema.’ There was an aggressive reaction against what we did – until the moment it became a success.

“Then suddenly everyone made Dogme movies – which was the intent, of course – and you could get Dogme furniture. It became a brand. At that moment, it was no longer a risk. It was a ticket to a film festival. Back then, it was about being naked, and making a naked movie. Then it became a sexy dress at Cannes in 98. And now? It’s an old dress. It would look strange. It would look like a uniform.”

With that analogy, is Vinterberg pleased that Another Round is a “sexy dress”? It was, among its accolades, selected for last year’s cancelled Cannes. Vinterberg thinks about this. “If I had done Another Round in my Dogme days, it would have been purely a celebration of alcohol. I would have been happy with the provocation. Whereas now it needed more gravitas. It needed more truthfulness. I had to tell the tragic tale of alcohol as well. That’s more whole and bigger.”

Another Round opens in UK cinemas on July 2