Another Round

Four teachers at a Copenhagen high school, worn out and quietly disappointed, test a theory borrowed from a Norwegian psychiatrist: that humans are born with a blood-alcohol level 0.05% too low. The rules are borrowed from Hemingway. Never after eight in the evening, never at weekends. Breathalysers keep it looking like science. For a while it works. Martin, Mads Mikkelsen's history teacher, whose own pupils have complained that he is boring, comes alive in the classroom. Then the dose creeps up, and the film does what Danish cinema does best: it stays with the consequences.

What makes it great is that Vinterberg refuses to preach. There is no "drink responsibly" message. Drinking here is joy and ruin, liberation and loneliness, sometimes in the same evening. Around the four men, the students drink as hard as the adults, and the whole country sings at its own celebrations.

Vinterberg lost his daughter Ida in a car accident four days into the shoot, and the film is dedicated to her. Against all odds, it ended up as a celebration of life rather than a warning against it. The four leads shared Best Actor at San Sebastián, and the film won the Oscar for Best International Feature. The final scene, Mikkelsen finally dancing, is one of the great moments in recent cinema. Watch it with friends you would trust after a second glass.