Henrik Ohsten/The BFI London Film Festival
MOVIE REVIEW
Another Round (2020)
The most shocking part of this movie is that they are teachers: Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen) is the gym teacher and soccer coach; Peter (Lars Ranthe) is the music teacher and piano player; Nikolaj (Magnus Millang) is the psychology teacher, the youngest of the group, and a father of three exhausting young sons; and Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) is the history teacher, for whom life is entirely gray. He and his wife, Anika (Maria Bonnevie), hardly speak anymore, his sons don’t even make eye contact, and the P.T.A. calls a meeting to tell him how concerned they are about his level of teaching. The four men go for a blow-out dinner for Nikolaj’s 40th, at which Nikolaj tells Martin, “I think you lack self-confidence and joy.” Normally, anyone expressing this to the man who’s been the nation’s leading movie star for a quarter-century would be laughed over the border. But as Martin, Mr. Mikkelsen has crumpled, and his friends set about clowning around until they cheer him up. The fun they have at the dinner gives them all a terrible idea.
Continue reading “Drunk on Life” »
Sydney Film Festival 2016
MOVIE REVIEW
The Commune (2016)
The Copenhagen of the 1970s lurked groovily over the horizon like a seven-day saturnalia to anyone peering toward the source of all the noise from the wrong side of the North Sea at the time. But Thomas Vinterberg revisits the environment of his childhood in “The Commune” and is careful to make it seem brittle, awkward and potentially corrosive to domestic harmony, full of the same misjudged fumblings toward happiness as everywhere else. Based primarily on a play by Mr. Vinterberg and Mogens Rukov and more distantly on the director’s own experiences, its characters are either helplessly insensitive or just hard of thinking, as well as adrift in an ocean of beige.
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MOVIE REVIEW
The Hunt (2012)
Per Arnesen/TrustNordisk
If it’s not too unfair to say it, Thomas Vinterberg’s films often convey the uncertainty of an artist casting around for a directorial identity. The enormous critical success of “The Celebration” in 1998 was followed by the flashy sci-fi ambition of “It’s All About Love,” an attempt to distance himself from both the artificial austerity of the Dogme regime and the work of his compatriot Lars von Trier.
Despite the signs that he wanted to escape the shadow of his former collaborator, the next few films followed an inarguably Mr. von Trier-like trajectory, with “Dear Wendy” being a “Dogville”-esque slice of subverted Americana and low-key parochial comedy “When a Man Comes Home” mirroring Mr. von Trier’s simultaneous diversion into chastened backtracking, “The Boss of It All”.
Following the partial return to form of “Submarino,” Mr. Vinterberg is firmly back on track with “The Hunt,” a film that satisfies his interest in hard-hitting taboo issues while retaining flashes of the old Dogme-era mischievousness. It’s a film that’s truly cinematic and refuses to be hidebound to earthy realist roots simply because of its gritty subject matter, while also displaying a structural cohesiveness and maturity often absent from the work of his more famous cohort. Thankfully it’s a balance that Mr. Vinterberg finally seems comfortable with.
Continue reading “Presumed Guilty” »