Another Round                 4 stars

This year’s Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film comes from Denmark in the form of Another Round by director Thomas Vinterberg and stars Mads Mikkelsen who is Denmark’s most recognized actor. Martin is a high school teacher in Copenhagen who seems to have everything, a wife and family and a good job teaching history to his students. But there is something missing so he joins in a plan with three of his fellow teachers at the school to start an experiment where the four agree to steadily drink on the job on the theory that maintaining a blood alcohol level of 0.05% will improve their performance in their daily life. The rules are no drinking after 8:00 pm or on the weekends. So you are probably thinking what could possibly go wrong with such a plan? Apparently nothing, that is until one of their group challenges them to take things up a level and increase the alcohol intake. What starts out as a comedy takes a dark turn into a serious drama when each one finds out the price of such behavior to their professional and social lives. Much of the success of the movie belongs to Mikkelsen’s Martin who can express a wide range of emotion. (See his earlier work in After the Wedding, A Royal Affair and At Eternity’s Gate) Many of his scenes must have been improvised to great success. This collaboration of writers, director and actors takes a silly premise and makes it into an emotional, dramatic story about what is important in life.