Another Round Review

A deserved Oscar Winner

In a film that was fundamentally altered by the impact of a Director’s personal loss, a degree of transcendence is achieved by allowing that even the hardest points in our lives can be truly life-affirming if we allow them to be.

Another Round which recently won an Academy Award, for Best International Feature Film, is directed by Thomas Vinterberg and stars Mads Mikkelsen. Four days into filming, however, Thomas received the awful news that his daughter had passed away in a car crash. This took him away from the project in which his daughter was supposed to star and in whose school the project was ultimately shot.

He returned to the project aware that the film whose script his late daughter had been enthralled with, may in fact help him through one of the darker points in his life. While his initial conception of the project was a celebration of alcohol, its effects on the ordinary human being, and its capacity to bring people together. Yet this seemed too cheap of an approach to Vinterberg, who recognized the substance’s capacity to bring people to their knees and also in the darkness it can at times draw out in individuals.

What has since emerged is a piece which is as much a celebration of life as a discussion of binge drinking and alcoholism. The core premise is based on Norwegian psychiatrist Finn…