Tag: Thomas Vinterberg

Another Round (Druk)

Posted on by victorfraga

A history professor, a school music director, a children sports coach and a psychology teacher walk into a bar. They’ve decided to test the theory that mankind should maintain a 0.05% blood alcohol concentration in order to maximise their potential and achieve greatness. Two glasses of wine for kick-off and then top it up throughout the day. You already know where this is going but it’s an intoxicating ride through Sazerac-sodden highs before the crashing hangover sets in.

Mads Mikkelsen’s Martin is the central protagonist and his issues are the most developed, with a turgid home life of moody teens and an absent wife on night shifts. He doesn’t get out much and they don’t go on holiday any more. His class literally organises a grassroots parent-teacher conference in complaint at how boring he is. Something has to give. Mikkelsen has the perfect face for this kind of gig – a craggy stoicism that loosens up to freely given grins as the booze takes hold.

The rest of the crew are less recognisable to a non-Scandinavian viewer but more than match the ever-compelling Mikkelsen. Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe and Magnus Millang are Tommy, Peter and Nikolaj, respectively. These chaps give strong comic performances that register equally strongly on the pathos scale when required. Hopefully we’ll get to see more of them in future. Group scenes of the gang provide loud, infectious fun but the individual stories of workplace successes and connecting with their young charges give the movie heart.

There are early attempts to codify the system, framed as a psycho-sociological experiment. Breathalysers are employed to give a semblance of fine control and ground rules are based on Hemingway’s tenets not to drink after 8pm or on weekends. Again, no prizes for guessing how the film progresses. Whilst the wannabe psychonauts are in it together, it is an inherently selfish and isolating act to surrender to addiction. The burden this places on the families of Martin and Nikolaj soon emerges from the depths of the bottle. Single men Tommy and Peter walk their own paths and the interpersonal differences of addiction susceptibility are explored. It is difficult to ascribe blame for the spiralling outcomes but there is a dark hint that psychology teacher Nikolaj, instigator of the grand experiment, has been on the sauce for a while now and has sought out fellow sinners to drag down with him.

Aside from individual narratives, there is a wider social commentary at play. References abound to the boozing habits of famous historical leaders and the binge drinking of the school kids backgrounds the film. One classmate in his late teens offhandedly confesses to drinking over 40 units a week, 55 if there’s a Champion’s League match. Europe is an acknowledged landmass of drinkers, and this isn’t going to change any time soon. There’s even a possible genetic basis for our preponderance to imbibe compared to other parts of the globe, selected for by the colder climes inhabited by ancient Europeans. As such, Another Round refuses to come down too heavily on either side, neither unreservedly extolling the virtues of booze nor decrying it as the devil like some prohibition-era pamphlet. There is no “Drink Responsibly” tag. However, arguments can be more persuasive when not construed as preaching.

For all that, it’s a film that’s proud to be deeply Danish, punctuated as it is by stirring choral renditions of patriotic songs. It’s a nice opportunity for the uninitiated to have a look into some of their cultural peculiarities, particularly in their schooling. Final exams are verbal affairs opposite your usual teachers? You get a little hat when you pass? What? Vinterberg pulls it all off stylishly, with clean interior shots of the school, beautiful homes and high-end restaurants. However, if that is an accurate representation of the dining culture in a famously expensive country, one shudders to think of the bill. To commit so thoroughly to alcohol in Denmark must costs a mountain of cash as well as your soul.

Another Round premiered at the San Sebastian Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. The four male leads won the Best Actor Prize. The film is part of the BFI London Film Festival in October. In cinemas on Friday, July 2nd. On VoD on Friday, September 24th.

Kursk: The Last Mission

Posted on by victorfraga

Submarine dramas can make good movies. Witness the huge success of Das Boot (Wolfgang Petersen, 1981), both in Germany, its country of origin, and worldwide. The claustrophobic atmosphere of the submarine, the dangers lurking beyond its walls, attacks from above and the sinking of ships by the successful crew, the tensions of men thrown together in a small space make for good drama.

Yet submarines are also travelling coffins. If all goes well this type of life must be exciting and adventurous. If it does not, death in a submarine is like being buried alive. For the unfortunate crew of the Kursk, a major Russian nuclear submarine, in August 2000 this was their fate. After an onboard explosion, the Kursk was trapped at the bottom of the Barents Sea, and after a delay, during which it was believed that some crew members could have been saved, it became apparent that all 118 crew members had died.

Even superficial online research shows that the precise nature of the accident on the Kursk and the possibility of rescuing the crew are very much disputed. This is not to support the Russian government in any way. The Kursk disaster became a byword for the cruelty and inefficiency of Putin’s government, which refused foreign help to rescue crew members. The incident caused a storm even within the Russian media, normally well controlled.

This movie takes up these themes. The obsolescence of so much Russian military equipment after the collapse of the Soviet system is revealed. The clamp on a diving vessel that would have allowed, through a specific hatch, the crew members to escape in decompressed conditions can’t be attached because it is too worn out, due to inadequate maintenance. The desperate families of the sailors are kept in the dark about what is happening to their loved ones are told lies and half-truths. One desperate woman is sedated by agents in a meeting because she is becoming embarrassing to the presiding naval officers. A foreign helping hand is declined and even when the nearest Russian admiral relents and calls on the services of a nearby British naval officer (Commodore David Russell, played by Colin Firth), he is promptly dismissed, and his post taken by a substitute.

The movie attempts to depict the suffering of the men waiting to be rescued. Here is where submarine drama kicks in. Matthias Schoenaerts (Mikhail Averin) does a brave job trying to keep up the morale of his men. He undertakes an incredibly long, underwater dive to release hatches trapping other crew members. Magnus Millang (Oleg Lebedev) tells silly jokes about polar bears and is generally the funny man in the desperate situation. The men bang pipes and walls of the submarine when they think they are going to be rescued. They have one last feast from ship’s rations before they die.

Their women – especially Léa Seydoux (Tanya Averina) – hold meetings, desperately trying to harry the authorities to be open with them. The lives of the crew’s families are depicted which includes a colourful Russian Orthodox wedding with cheerful singing and feasting afterwards, contrasted with the dull, Soviet-style flats in Murmansk where they live.

All this is well done and convincing. We get great performances from big beasts of the cinema such as Max von Sydow (Vladimir Petrenko), acting as a craggy, patriarchal Admiral, a faithful servant of the state, who will not be moved by the distress of the families. He takes little Misha’s (the captain’s son; Artemiy Spiridonov) refusal to shake his hand after his father’s funeral in his stride. Colin Firth (Commodore David Russell) is exactly right as the compassionate, but stiff upper-lipped, British naval officer.

Having said all this, at two hours this movie is a bit long. We know what the fate of the sailors will be. This undermines the tension of the submarine drama. Much of the drama in the submarine is pure speculation. Some think that their rescue was virtually impossible. Others maintain that, harsh though it was, Russia’s refusal to allow foreign powers to access a top-secret nuclear submarine was only to be expected. In similar circumstance the British and American governments might well have taken the same attitude. Nuclear warfare is a zero-sum game for everyone.

Kursk: The Last Mission is in cinemas and digital HD on Friday, July 12th. On Netflix in February.