Mubi Monday: Submarino (2010)

Anything from Thomas Vinterberg is going to be worth your time, trust me on that, so I went into Submarino with some amount of optimism. That was absolutely justified. This is a standard drama, albeit one with some moments of real darkness (of course), and feels like another essential viewing experience for anyone exploring Vinterberg's filmography.

Jakob Cedergren plays Nick, a man just released from prison. He seems to enjoy drinking and fighting. Or that may be what he used to enjoy. Nick's brother (Peter Plaugborg), on the other hand, enjoys drugs. He will steal to fund his habit, and may even be looking at an opportunity to become a dealer. Which doesn't look like the foundation for a great life for his young son, Martin (Gustav Fischer Kjærulff). Maybe Nick can help, or maybe there's not a lot he can do. Even brothers who were best friends in childhood can find themselves at opposite sides of a gaping chasm if they walk down very different paths through life.

Based on a novel by Jonas T. Bengtsson, turned into screenplay form by Tobias Lindholm and Vinterberg, this is a strangely captivating film that somehow manages to avoid turning viewers off by having the most unpleasant moments positioned at the very start of the film, during a sequence that has Nick dealing with an old friend/acquaintance, Ivan (Morten Rose), who has a very unhealthy view of women. This ensures that everything is dark and tense, but allows for the subsequent scenes, many showing an addict driven by his need to get his next fix, to feel much easier to endure.

Making use of some of the ideas at the heart of the Dogme 95 movement, mainly to do with the naturalism of the filming and the performances, but not limiting himself in any of the technical work, Vinterberg is well-placed to helm this. He often presents characters with an impressively non-judgemental eye, and there's no moments that feel as if they've been added to inject some shock and sensationalism into the runtime.

The performances are excellent across the board, but Cedergren is a very important anchor for everything. He's a calm presence, although very much battling with raging currents within himself. Plaugborg has to be more nervy and frantic, but he does very well in his role. As for young Kjærulff, he somehow manages to perfectly convey the essence of a child living with an addict parent, being carefree and enjoying life while also being more careful at times as the creeping suspicion that something is not quite right about the situation keeps interrupting your thoughts. Rose is good at being the most unpleasant man that you'd never want to meet, and everyone else maintains the standard set by the main performers.

More of a character study than anything else, and arguably easier to overlook than most of the other Vinterberg movies I have watched, Submarino is still one that I highly recommend to everyone. There may not be one big moment to remember, or one easy and obvious moral lesson (although a few are mixed together), but it still feels worthwhile, perceptive, and able to say a lot without dictating to others how everything should be interpreted.

8/10

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Mubi Monday: Another Round (2020)

If you have yet to explore the filmography of director Thomas Vinterberg then you are in for a treat. The man has made a number of films I would consider near-masterpieces, and Another Round is potentially his greatest work, a perfect viewing experience that carefully navigates very tricky territory.

Four male friends, all high school teachers, find themselves feeling rather listless and uninspired. Which makes them keen to try an experiment based on the idea that humans should top up the alcohol level in their bloodstream to a small amount that gives them their optimum balance. It isn’t much, just 0.5% (initially), but the positive results start to tempt the men into pushing things further. Although every main character gets enough screentime, the focus often moves back to Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), a history teacher who seems to have lost himself, disconnected from his pupils and also from his wife (Maria Bonnevie).

Having now attempted to maintain a sober life for just over thirteen months (you do keep counting these things, no matter how long it goes on for), I admit that I had a bit of trepidation when going in to this. Would it make drinking seem more tempting once again, or would it pain me to see moments of self-inflicted messiness that I could identify all too closely with? Mercifully, it does a bit of both, without overdoing either.

The script, written by Tobias Lindholm and Vinterberg, investigates the central issue with a keen eye for the strange relationship that so many people have with alcohol. You get the rites of passage, you get the use of alcohol as a social lubricant, you get the times in which someone doesn’t stop the party antics until long after everyone else, and much more. But, and most importantly, you get just as much time spent with characters who are trying to recapture a certain familiar joy, crucially not necessarily realising what they have in their lives while bemoaning what is missing.

Everyone does great work here, everyone (and the rest of the cast includes Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe, and Magnus Millang), but this is another film starring Mikkelsen that is absolutely owned by Mikkelsen. Watching him go from despondency to lively engagement with others is wonderful, watching him take things too far is worrying, and watching him dance and express every feeling running through his body without uttering a word (in a cinematic sequence that I probably won’t see beaten this year) is one of the greatest pieces of physical performance that I have seen in a long, long time. And I am not prone to hyperbole.

Considering the events that occurred just before the film was starting, a tragedy for Vinterberg that seems to have made him more determined to make things ultimately uplifting and joyous, Another Round is all the more bittersweet from start to finish. That could have also made it a difficult experience to process. It isn’t though. You can still project your own experiences and feelings over the ending, but that doesn’t stop it from being a life-affirming celebration of simply being human, and all the pleasure and pain that entails.

10/10

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