What is the plot?

Martin, Tommy, Nicolaj and Peter are four friends, teachers at a school in a city in Denmark. They are all going through the crisis of adulthood, with routine and unemotional lives. One of them explains that he read the theory that human beings are born with a deficit of alcohol and that having a certain degree of alcohol in the blood improves mood and daily life. The four teachers embark on an experiment, drinking and maintaining a level of alcohol during their daily lives, and they see its effects. Will they improve their lives? Will they be able to control the experiment? What will be the consequences?

“"What is youth? A dream. What is love? The content of the dream".” ^{Søren Kierkegaard}

The new film by filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg is fascinating, funny and sad at the same time. Druk is a drama, with amusing scenes, but above all a drama, and very solid, like everything that Vinterberg does, a filmmaker with an excellent career who became known in the nineties with the film Festen (The Celebration), the first film of the Dogma movement.

With Druk (Another Round), Vinterberg also makes his film more digestible for the general public, whose plot offers very funny situations, especially when the four characters are on stage, interacting and getting drunk and pushing the limits. Unlike another of his great films, The Hunt, which is an extraordinary work and whose story was so intense that it gave no opportunity to relax.

Martin, the main character in the story, is married, has two children and is the school's history teacher. He is going through a midlife crisis, a life immersed in routine, a marriage that no longer communicates, a gray and boring life with no passion for anything.

The other three teachers, one of whom is also married, has just turned forty, has three children and focuses on family routine. The other two are not married, but one drowns out his frustration at not having children and family by seducing women and another is completely alone.

They all have in common that they have lost that life force, youth is long gone, now they are men entering old age, immersed in an emotional sadness. Many spectators with similar characteristics to the characters will feel clearly identified with them.

When they start their crazy experiment, keeping it a secret, their lives will change. At first they will keep their blood alcohol level below 0.5%, but when Martin sees that he is giving the most fluid classes, that he feels better about himself, that he recovers his sexual passion with his wife, that he feels the emotion of being alive again, he will make them consume more alcohol and increase their levels.

The professor of psychology, literature and sports will also notice the effects of his experiment. They feel more joyful, it seems that the young people's energies have returned and so they decide to take everything to the next level, increasing their alcohol consumption, until they lose control and cross the limits they had set.

When the limits are exceeded, there will be consequences, the problems will be present in their lives, by the time they decide to end the experiment, for some of them it will be too late, the dangers of unlimited consumption of alcoholic beverages will take their toll. Family life destroyed and tragedy.

But Thomas Vinterberg does not want to give us any moral lessons, although he is critical of the so-called welfare of Danish society, a country whose alcohol consumption rates are among the highest in the world. The entire economic well-being of that country has a price to pay, and that is the depression of many of its inhabitants, who seek to escape their routines through drinking.

The filmmaker tells us about the friendship of these four men who seem to be successful, they are school teachers, who with their salary can afford luxuries that in other countries would be impossible to achieve by being a school teacher. But they are sad people, with lives on the verge of emotional collapse.

When I say it is not a moralistic film, we will realize in its final stretch, when the tragedy is present, and the group of teachers with the experiment finished, it seems that they have straightened out their lives. For example, Martin receives a new opportunity from his wife, but at the same time that we see the text messages from there, the character cannot resist the powerful impulse to feel alive, offering us a funny, crazy and fabulous final sequence that will remain engraved in the minds of many viewers.

The problem of alcoholism in Denmark is worrisome, and they are eating from a very young age. In this article the statistics and information are well detailed: Link

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Mads Mikkelsen is an acting beast, he's one of my favorite actors. I remember seeing him for the first time in the 1996 film, Pusher, a film I discovered and was surprised by director Nicolas Winding Refn. In that film, Mikkelsen played Tony, a somewhat clumsy criminal, who accompanied the main character played by Kim Bodnia. From that moment on, I followed Mikkelsen's career, which left me surprised. I would later star in the second part of Pusher and some time later, he made the jump to Hollywood as the villain of Casino Royale. Many will recognize him for having given way to Hannibal Lecter in the television series and for his roles in big productions such as Rogue One and Doctor Strange. But I recommend watching movies like The Hunt, Valhalla Rising, The Salvation, The Unfaithful Queen, Michael Kohlhaas , Bleeder and Pusher.

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Mikkelsen plays Martin, the main character, and gives us another masterful performance, worthy of being recognized with awards. It is incredible how this actor surprises me again, making such a human and credible character, we notice his frustration in his eyes, and the moments when he is drunk, are great, he does not exaggerate, it seems that he is really drunk.

Thomas Bo Larsen plays Tommy, the lonely sports teacher, who will support one of the student boys who doesn't have many qualities to play soccer. He is the character who will bear the brunt of this adventure and whose actor gives a phenomenal performance. The actor is well known in his country and has a long career in film. I have seen him in several Danish productions, and he has worked with the filmmaker before.

Magnus Millang plays Nikolaj, the literature professor, who is forty years old and tired of his life as a married man and looking after three children. He is one of the most enthusiastic people to do the experiment. He is known for his work on Danish television programs and has also worked with the director on other films.

Lars Ranthe plays Peter, the professor of psychology, the man who in the middle of a drinking bout, declares that he would have liked to have a family and children like some of his other friends, implying that loneliness affects him. Another fabulous Danish actor, whom I have seen in other movies and who always makes a name for himself in his performances.

Four characters that will give us emotional scenes and moments, four characters that live an inner emotional test and seek an illusion of escape through alcohol.

Trailer

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