ANOTHER ROUND: Hollywood’s Drinking Problem
Nordisk FilmIt’s time for an intervention. Hollywood has a drinking problem. Not actors and crew, producers or those who keep the cogs turning, but the films themselves. Representation of social class, gender, sexuality and religion are all widely respected and given unique clarity in Hollywood pictures, but it seems alcoholism and its fragile nature are still ripe for the picking. After the release of Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, there is a sense of understanding. Stripping away the shaky glorification and uninspired critique of alcoholism prevalent in Hollywood fixtures, Vinterberg proves overconsumption and addiction can be presented in a way that isn’t solely to accelerate the plot or thrown in as brief character development. The Mads Mikkelsen-led piece is far away from the allure of Tinseltown, but it makes for an exceptional contrast to how these big projects handle sensitive topics.
The biggest asset of Another Round is how cautious it is with its subject. To shoehorn in everything and anything would be a sloppy and redundant way to look at how addiction affects an individual. Four healthy, somewhat happy friends barrelling towards their inevitable mid-life crises take part in an experiment: to keep a certain level of alcohol in them at any given time. Spiralling into addiction is inevitable, but steady hands in the directing chair mould a strong piece from Vinterberg that does more than the usual song and dance of alcohol’s dangers. Key to the point of this criticism is Hollywood’s appraisal of drunks and addicts.
Everything Must Go may be the best example to this representation. The Will Ferrell-starring drama showcases a man’s alcoholism accelerated by events out of his control. Losing his job and his wife, everything comes thick and fast at Nick Halsey (Ferrell) in a series of events that try and combine sloppy romance with heavy-hitting drama. Scenes depicting a sullen character in the throes of agony, scouting out a potential sip of alcohol as the token love interest looks on, are rather common to the iconography Hollywood presents. It happened in Crazy Heart and Rachel Getting Married, too, but Everything Must Go provides the blueprint for this approach to alcoholism.
A thick acoustic track layering the top of it as Ferrell throws empty cans around produce the idea that, without alcohol, the immediate reaction of a drunk is violence and frustration. With Another Round, the characters do devolve, but their grip on happier times and memory-making events to contrast the darker days make for a balanced understanding of addiction. The hangovers and hardships are shown, but before the crash come moments of exuberant freedom. With four friends staggering through the streets, smiles pinned to their faces, Vinterberg’s interest in the highs and lows serves the film well, whereas Everything Must Go wallows in pitiful, predictable circumstances. Its image of drunks never wavers from the premise of rejecting help and lashing out at those that do offer a hand.
This isn’t new, though. The iconography of drunkards hasn’t changed all that much since the early days of Hollywood. The Lost Weekend shows addiction as a ritual-like process. Don Birnam (Ray Milland) holds such feverish joy for not just the consumption, but the purchase of liquor. The adrenalin they muster in hiding it from concerned loved ones and stubborn bar staff is highlighted well in the Billy Wilder piece. Another Round presents this rush as well: Martin (Mikkelsen) smuggles bottles in his bag, swigging occasionally in-between his classes. It’s not just the act of consumption that these characters sought, but the rush of getting away with it. A fight against the system. Wilder and Vinterberg share that theme, but the handling of it has severely differing consequences. For Vinterberg, the good times roll more often, while Another Round just makes its harsh times rather brutal. Something The Lost Weekend misses out on is that signal of brutality. A sluggish lead holding onto Hollywood tropes is as far as Wilder gets. A question of whether the brief but blistering highs are worth the lengthy lows is asked with sincerity and forms a focal point of Vinterberg’s narrative. With Wilder, the resurgence of a character and their steady return to normality is a direct conclusion to the rock bottom Birnam hits.
Earnestness, it would seem, is in short supply and small demand for the Hollywood machine. But not all are so ham-fisted and staunch in their predictable and somewhat harmful antics. Take the many variations of A Star is Born, for instance, and how it looks to highlight the celebrity effect of overindulgence. Especially in the Bradley Cooper-directed edition of the film, functional alcoholism and reliance on substances aren't shown as a blessing to creativity, but an embarrassing tabloid spectacle. Usurping the awards acceptance speech of his wife, Jackson Maine (Cooper) staggers onto the stage and into the spotlight. What should be a glorious high for Ally Maine (Lady Gaga) is instead a whole new low for a publicly embarrassed Jackson, his over consumption leading to public embarrassment on a global scale. Cooper captures a sense of helplessness here that Vinterberg also presents in Another Round. Clear problems arise through the swift intake of alcohol – the breakdown of married life and the uncovering of harsh truths made possible through such an erratic change in personality. Alcohol is used as a tool to magnify problems of the leading characters in Another Round, their affairs and misanthropy injected with publicity once alcohol takes hold.
Other reactions are possible, of course. A Star is Born and Another Round may provide moments of articulated understanding, highlighting the fractured soul and pained horrors of substance abuse, but there are films that look to buffer a Hollywood sheen. Flight may grapple with similar tones of addiction to Cooper’s 2018 offering, but the presentation and handling of such a subject makes a drastic change. The Denzel Washington-led drama attempts a showcase of functional alcoholism. The idea that someone can abuse substances and perform at the same speed as a sober mind, is relatively popular in the Hollywood awards bait circles. Neither intricate nor detailed enough, throughout Flight the anguish of this state of living is presented with a sickening simplicity. There is little detail to its process of addiction, apart from those sentimental moments that would heave Washington into the limelight once more. This idea of functional alcoholism is presented well in Vinterberg’s piece, a hard-line message that shows such a concept is folly at best. Tommy (Tomas Bo Larsen) is the best example Another Round can offer. A gym teacher that finds himself more dependent on whiskey and liquor than his colleagues, his slippery slope towards alcoholism is projected as something that can happen to anyone. Tommy’s gradual spiral is equally accelerated by outside influence, not just alcohol; similar to Everything Must Go, but not as repetitive. Knock-on effects of his dependency accelerate his dive down to rock bottom. Losing his job is the final stroke, whereas in Flight and Everything Must Go, job loss and rock bottom are shown as the beginning of a new chapter, rather than the end of its story.
Films that discuss addiction have, to some extent, a genuine desire to handle alcoholics with care. More often than not, they don’t quite manage to come through with anything emotionally provocative or insightful. None of these films feel oblivious or mean-spirited in their handling of such a subject, but when compared with Another Round, they don’t mark addiction up as something too severe. Alcoholism is presented as a low ebb, absolutely, but it is a theme paraded around as if picking up the pieces and bouncing back was a relatively easy task to manage. Either falling prey to the usual cavalcade and noise made by the awards season or managing to present interesting themes that go nowhere in particular, it’s a mixed bag indeed. Those Hollywood achievements that do hope to bring wider discussion to addiction and alcoholism through tired tropes and dull filmmaking are doing more harm than good. They set in stone a stereotype that few will ever break out of. Showcased more often than not as a simple series of stepping stones to success, rather than a hard-fought battle that will wage on in an individual for the rest of their days. Characters present in these films overindulge in drink, but Hollywood has surfeited on thick layers of prose and predictability for some time now. Their addiction to complacency is as worrying as the addiction they mismanage on the big screen. Therefore, Vinterberg’s Another Round could be a form of shock therapy Hollywood desperately needs.