Almost There: Mads Mikkelsen in "Another Round"
Friday, April 16, 2021 at 11:00AM 
AMPAS isn't particularly open to the celebration of non-English-speaking performances. Still, once in a while, one or two manage to score big with the Academy, even win gold. That might very well happen this year with Youn Yuh-Jung's Best Supporting Actress bid for Minari. However, that doesn't mean that 2020 didn't have lots of other great non-Anglophone turns ignored by Oscar. For instance, in the Best Actor race, Mads Mikkelsen might have come close to his first nomination for Thomas Vinterberg's Best Director and Best International Feature nominee, Another Round…
The Danish film concerns a group of four middle-aged teachers stuck in a rut, drowning in self-pity and a chronic lack of confidence, purpose, life. That is until one sad birthday celebration brings about an insidious idea that the group quickly embraces. Inspired by the theories of psychiatrist Finn Skårderud, the men decide to test if a constant state of mild inebriation would make them reach their full potential. They look to the bottom of the bottle, searching for relaxation, creativity, a new meaning for their meaningless existences. As expected, everything goes wrong rather quickly, euphoria giving way to a mighty mournful hangover.
Mads Mikkelsen plays the leading man of this depressing quartet. He's Martin, a history teacher who's the first to embrace the Skårderud method, pulling the rest of the troupe with him. Like a whirlpool, the History teacher unwittingly pulls his friends to their watery end. It's easy to see why the booze is so tempting to him, so stark is the evocation of despair Mikkelsen shows in his early scenes. As he performs the passive placidity of someone who's given up, the actor makes us witness Martin moving from professional to domestic setting with overwhelming numbness.
Unmotivated, sluggish, the pedagogue seems drunk when sober, floating through rooms like a faint whisper of a man. His classes are boring. His teaching is more akin to sleepwalking than anything else. Above it all, he feels uninvested in all things, his stony face carved into a sad mask, perpetually dripping with indifference. He stinks of deep-set dissatisfaction, the sort that would result in a howling cry for help if he only had any energy left for such strong emotions. Drowning, he needs someone to throw him a life raft. Unfortunately, when that someone doesn't materialize, he goes for the siren call of alcohol instead.
Mikkelsen wouldn't be the first great thespian to let negative judgment for a midlife crisis plot inform the characterization. However, the Danish actor approached Martin's sadness with earnestness, sincerity, and willingness to plunge the teacher's soul, searching for an emptiness that transcends surface-level ennui. What could be a clichéd tired caricature, thus becomes something more uncomfortable, challenging too. In the birthday dinner that changes everything, you'll notice he's the only teacher that doesn't openly laugh or voice doubts about the hypothesis of constant inebriation as the path to a better life.
He smiles but without humor. It's a weary expression, a ray of hope flickering like a weal lightbulb that's about to go out—Mikkelsen's great at portraying that vicious feeling of pervasive loneliness. One can be surrounded by friends, laughing with apparent social merriment, and still be suffocating in isolation. Vinterberg's camera, well-attuned to his actors' process, knows how to gaze at his leading man, illuminating the pensive sorrow that cascades down those sharp features like a waterfall of sublimated helplessness.
Even before tears fall down that visage, the light, the camera's motion, the dragged-out line readings have already cut open the character, revealing Martin's vulnerabilities for all to see. It's a pulpy red mess of bruised sentiment, no hope, and no exit to that condition. What a frightening sight, what a riveting performance, what a great actor capable of making despondency into something worth being crystalized on the big screen. Here at The Film Experience, we all love to watch movies about women lying to themselves. Another Round proves that the masculine twist of that model can be enticing too.
The ghost of a dancer's lithe movement sometimes appears, both Mikkelsen's and his character's, a glimpse of vaporous glories long lost to the passage of time. Whether hints for the explosive ending, small character details, or both, these lovely morsels of a past life do much to dynamize Martin's depressive routines. It's in the tiniest details, like how he turns in his kitchen, his shoulders swiveling in fluid lines to reveal a look of slight disgust in the face of the father who contemplates his children. While never overplaying his hand, Mikkelsen illuminates his character's uglier facets, showcasing his hard edges in painful relief. Because of that, it's so much more fascinating to see him change when inebriated.
It's easy to exaggerate drunkenness when acting it. Mikkelsen is careful in his delineation of Martin's intoxicated states. The depressive meanderings at dinner are necessarily distinct from the morning drunkard's slightly unstable motor skills, the over-articulated speech, and easy smiles. Both are a far cry from the euphoric cool teacher whose interior voices of doubt are muffled by strong drink. From the tired professional whose mouth tastes ashen and whose brow shines with stale sweat, the beaten-down unfocused grief of the mourning alcoholic.
There's a curious tragedy to the way Martin's body initially steadies with a drink. After two days, the impaired motor skills have faded from sight. He seems more confident, more assured, both in behavior and in the general manner he occupies and traverses through his personal and professional spaces. The crutch of alcohol is traitorous, destructive, but that doesn't mean it isn't effective. And then, when everything seems to be going fine when Martin walks like he's prancing, he slams head-first against a doorframe. It's impossible not to find some humor in this, but neither Mikkelsen nor Vinterberg overplay the effect.
Even as blood starts to be shed and control slips from the teacher's shaking hands, they don't stop. We sense their willingness to risk self-annihilation in pursuit of an elusive catharsis. Like Icarus, they fly too close to the sun. Mikkelsen's Martin is the first to realize his waxwings are melting, but that doesn't prevent him from flying up, up towards his blistering doom. While the audience can see what's about to happen with tortuous foresight, it seems the men are living in the moment to such an extent that the concept of consequences has subsumed in a tattered wave of boozy breath. That is until the reality of the situation is thrown in their face like a bucket of ice-cold water.
After Martin's been found unconscious by the neighbors, there's nothing left to hide. What starts as a black hole of shame, dejectedly simmering under the gaze of his shocked children, quickly turns into something much more unnerving when the wife confronts him. The downward looks and nervous tics settle down into a menacing affliction, swallowed down the fury that's been trying to burst out for ages. Irrational, blind by self-hatred exploded outwards, Martin shouts, threatens, and breaks the stillness of the domestic argument with violence. Rhythmically, the scene is impeccably staged and shot, like a ballet of viperous words, curdled resentments, portentous looks, and those final cries that still ring in my ears.
To conclude this performance, this masterful symphony of human disappointments, Mikkelsen and Vinterberg deliver a scene to remember. Shocked by loss, the teachers mingle with a rabble of drunk students. Between beer drinking and bubbly showers, the men seem to find a semblance of absolution. Whether it's hope or misanthropic acceptance stays up in the air. As Martin unravels in dance, Mikkelsen explores this character's whole gamut in one single sequence. In his movements, his pauses, the actor encapsulates the pursuit of ecstasy thwarted by an unfulfilling reality, the limits of the body, the mind, the spirit. He captures the joy and that fantastic feeling. That sensation that makes one go back to those vices that destroy us from the inside out.
Throughout this awards season, Mads Mikkelsen's work in Another Round has been mostly ignored by American prizes, be it industry honors or critics' juries. That being said, the Danish actor did score a BAFTA nomination, and his film overperformed significantly. While the Best International Feature nomination was a given, few predicted Vinterberg to crack into the Best Director field. Still, the former Dogma 95 auteur did it, showing comprehensive support for the flick. All this considered, one can assume Mikkelsen got close to the nod, give or take Delroy Lindo and the Judas and the Black Messiah actors. Had it happened, the nomination would have been amply deserved.
Another Round is currently available to stream on Hulu.
Reader Comments (19)
Great write up of my favorite lead performance of the year.
His quiet breakdown during the birthday dinner is a stunning achievement. One of the most convincing portrayals of bone-deep depression I've seen.
A snub for the ages. Another one.
His dance routine in rehearsal and in film has been blessing my TL for weeks.
Fabulous performance.
He's definitely going to catch Oscar's eye one of these days.
The dreaded 6th spotter who was more deserving than this years expected winner,a former winner and Yuen.
My #2 male lead performance of the year (after Hopkins). Thank you for doing him justice.
I've said it before, but *that face* is a gift - for him, for us, for every director he's worked with and for every camera that gets a close-up. How can something that looks like it's carved out of wood be so expressive? Or rather, it shifts from expressive to impassive (and back) so fluidly you almost don't catch it. But you do.
It's a nice contrast/complement to the dancer's fluidity of his body.
Mads was SO GOOD in this. I would've happily seen him nominated over Gary Oldman.
I loved this movie. So interesting to watch a drama from another country. Mads Mikkelsen was wonderful, and the look at "alcohol culture" was quite revealing. Definitely worth 2 hours of your time.
I was hoping he would surprise and get nominated.
Such a tough year for best actor.
He was probably really, really close.
I usually don't drink alcohol, but the ending makes me so thirsty.
My fav lead performance of the year. Pity that despite Another Ground success with Ampas, he didn’t find any space in Best Actor line-up
Lindo was the toughest snub for me until I finally watched Another Round. WOW. What an incredible year for lead actor. I go back and forth on my top 5, the only thing I'm sure of is Oldman has no business here (it's a good performance but in a year this stacked, no).
Mikkelsen/Hopkins
Lindo
Ahmed
Boseman
Yuen
Ben-Adir
How lucky we are as filmgoers to have a set of Best Actor runners up that includes masterful work from Mikkelson, Lindo, Ben-Adir, Rahim, and Magaro.
Should’ve been nominated. A wonderful performance.
Magaro?
Considering how little traction Da 5 Bloods and The Mauritanian (which I suspect was close in this category as well) got, I feel fairly confident Mads was indeed #6 here (bar perhaps Stanfield/Kaluuya), and with his film getting the surprise Director nod it must have been quite close.
Tough year for best actor?
If Gary Oldman gets this nomination, this couldn't have been such a tough year.
It would be way better to have Mads nominated instead of Gary Oldman, who does an ok job in an ok movie that nobody really cares about, getting his third nomination.
He's had so many great performances that when he finally does get nominated he'll probably win on the first try.
As a Dane, it's always great to see films from our country being celebrated. But that Another Round is the latest film to break out, is really surprising to me. It was not a film I had expected to receive this much praise. Mads Mikkelsen won the European Film Award and was nominated at the Baftas and that is already a great achievement. I wouldn't nominate him though and for the non-nominated I still think both Delroy Lindo and Kingsley Ben-Adir are more deserving. That Ben-Adir has received close to nothing is really, really something I don't understand.
And by the way, that Mikkelsen did that dance routine at the end of Another Round is something that has been talked a lot about. He actually danced for many years before his breakthrough in the movie business but he has never used it in films before.
By the way - there's footage of him dancing in a Tv show from 1991 at YouTube :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Dz9UK7zVKI