Directed by: Thomas Vinterberg
Starring: Mads Mikkelsen
Official Selection - Cannes 2020.
Four friends read a theory that having a blood alcohol content of 0.05 keeps us more relaxed and creative - and they decide to experiment by start drinking. They end up drinking more, and more. The film was initially meant to be a celebration of drinking, based on the thesis that world history would've been different without alcohol - for example: people like Winston Churchill, Ernst Hemingway would drink a lot, and Hitler wouldn't. But one week into filming, Thomas Vinterberg's daughter died in a car accident - who was initially the one who pushed Thomas to make this into a movie. After this incident, they apparently reworked the script to make it more life affirming. The film is dedicated to her.
The filmmaking is top notch, the way it's shot and cut - it exactly captures the state of mind of the characters. Especially the last song, and the scenes where they are confronted by their families after going home drunk - the way they act and behave is one thing, but the camera movements also convey the feeling of being high - the handheld movement, and the edit is also strange at certain parts. The text on the screen is an interesting tool, they use. At the starting, it felt like a film about alcohol addiction - it is to an extent, but the film says that despite of the bad things alcohol does - it's fun. That's the worldview here. Despite of their friend dying, they have some hesitations - but they move on and still have fun drinking. It falls in the optimistic nihilism zone, where anything we do doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things - so we might as well have some fun.
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