Another Round (Druk)

This week we are reviewing Another Round, the 2020 Danish drama directed by Thomas Vinterberg and starring Mads Mikkelsen. Four middle-aged Copenhagen schoolteachers, each quietly adrift in their own lives, agree to test a theory that humans function better maintaining a constant mild level of intoxication — and discover that the experiment works, until it doesn't.   The podcast is out now on YouTube and also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If this one gets you thinking, share it with someone who would argue with you about the ending. That is the whole point. Hit subscribe or follow — it really does help us keep going.   Before the film, the Aussie arrives and announces he has a child's palate and calls himself a baboon within the first two minutes — both unprompted — after nearly dying at a corporate lunch when butter chicken turned out to be considerably spicier than expected. The Scotsman went to the dentist and spent ten minutes explaining why someone should invent a high pressure water jet to remove plaque, then lost the thread entirely.   The Scotsman had not seen Another Round before bringing it. He had seen the final dance scene on Instagram and decided that was reason enough to watch it with the Aussie. Both agreed it was a slow burn that takes time to earn, and both agreed it earned it.   The film discussion is one of the best the show has produced. The Scotsman walks through the film's central lesson scene in full — three anonymous political leaders, their personal habits, and the classroom reveal that undoes every assumption the students made. Leader A was Roosevelt. Leader B was Churchill. Leader C was Hitler. The classroom goes silent and the hosts let it sit.   What follows is a proper conversation about alcohol — not as a moral question but as a human one. The Scotsman asks whether he has ever drunk to feel more comfortable in social situations. He answers yes. The Aussie asks back. They go somewhere honest that most podcasts would not, and the film earns its place in the conversation rather than just being discussed from a distance.   The debate about the ending is the standout moment. The Aussie is convinced that when Martin reads his wife's text and then dances and dives into the harbour, he is choosing freedom over reconciliation — a new life, not the old one. The Scotsman is equally convinced the dance is pure joy at getting her back, a man finally alive again after years of numbness. Neither fully concedes. ChatGPT is consulted on air. It says the ending is deliberately ambiguous. The Scotsman says it is 90-10 in his favour. The Aussie says 60-40. They invite the audience to weigh in.   In Rohan Reminisces, the hosts cover 2021 — the January 6th Capitol attack, Biden's inauguration, the Suez Canal blockage, the Tokyo Olympics, the fall of Kabul, and the deaths of Prince Philip, Betty White, Charlie Watts and Bert Newton. The Aussie also notes that Prince Harry and Meghan had a baby, which he describes as "a little bit."   The trivia covers the film's $7 million budget and $21 million return, the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, the Dogma 95 manifesto that shaped Vinterberg's whole approach to filmmaking, the fact that Mads Mikkelsen trained as a competitive dancer before he ever acted and performed the entire final sequence himself without a double — and the story of Ida Vinterberg, Thomas's 19-year-old daughter, killed in a car accident on the fourth day of filming. The film was shot at her school with her classmates. The final dance was made for her. The Oscar speech described the film as born in grief and becoming a celebration of life.   One of the more honest and unexpected episodes in the show's run. Go and watch the film first if you can.