Another Round

In October 2021, I watched Another Round for the first time at Kinema Junpo Theater. The Danish film was released in September 2021 starring Mads Mikkelsen who is called a Scandinavian treasure in Japan.

Although I had thought that it tells a story about a man who becomes the subject of a full-scale experiment done by a university or a laboratory in order to prove that persons can have fulfilling private life and work with moderate alcohol, yet it just depicts four close high school teachers who try to kind of seriously test a scholar's theory about moderate alcohol's effect on their lives and fall into a situation that drinking persons can imagine.

Friendship among the four men were heartwarming. So were how Martin, a history teacher looking dumb, played by Mikkelsen gradually gives intriguing lessons with the help of alcohol and how his students' expression become lively. Then I was drawn by the drama of Martin facing a midlife crisis and his wife. Mikkelsen also shows a brilliant dance as if he is taking out pent-up frustration caused by playing a lame ordinary man at the last scene. The ending was really refreshing.

About Denmark, I only knew chocolate Danish and I remembered that we played against the country in the group stage of the 202 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Tomasson, a former teammate of Japanese legend Shinji Ono at Feyenoord in the Netherlands league, scored on a penalty kick in the game, however, after that he was injured and replaced. That was kind of why we easily won the game. In addition to the memories, I could learn the Scandinavian country's atmosphere a little thanks to the movie. Watching foreign flicks is meaningful because I can enjoy myself feeling an air of each country and something which I never can learn from literal information.