Another Round

Four teachers run their drinking as a school assignment: they measure, file reports, cite sources. So Thomas Vinterberg keeps returning to the classroom rather than the bar, showing the results mostly during lessons. Finn Skårderud, the Norwegian psychiatrist credited with the idea, says it was wrongly attached to him. He wrote in a book preface that we might be born with a 0.05 percent deficit, then rejected it in the next paragraph. He later consulted on the production and called its handling balanced. Vinterberg first wrote the material for the stage at the Burgtheater in Vienna. Four days into shooting, his daughter Ida was killed in a road accident; she was to have played the daughter of Martin, played by Mads Mikkelsen. Some scenes were filmed in Ida’s classroom with her classmates, and the script was turned toward affirming life. Mikkelsen trained as a dancer from 19, which is why the closing dance holds in long handheld takes. The film won the international feature film Oscar and Vinterberg was nominated for directing. A good fit if you accept that the film never grades the experiment and closes on a leap into the water instead of a verdict. Not for you if alcohol dependence touches you or someone close, because it plays drunkenness for laughs and then itemises the bill.