Accustomed to seeing him in front of the hero on duty in Hollywood cinema, in “Another Round” shines the immense talent of an actor who, before performing, stepped on the stage to dance. We talked to him about the favorite to win the International Oscar.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Mads Mikkelsen’s (Copenhagen, 1965) is a career full of villains, manual villains that he manages to convert, sometimes starting from a compendium of topics and with only a handful of minutes on the screen, in twisted and fascinating beings. There are his roles in the Bond saga, in the Marvel Universe or in the dystopian Chaos Walking, which hits the bill on April 30. Or his disturbing Dr. Lecter in Hannibal, the TV series in which he ended with note – the weather, in this case three seasons, and the background material helped – the difficult challenge of taking the witness of Anthony Hopkins, making his own the psychokiller who defined an entire era. It is not surprising that when Johnny Depp was invited to leave the Fantastic Beasts franchise, his name was first on the list of candidates to play Gellert Grindelwald. Because Mikkelsen, in Hollywood, is the face of evil. Nothing to do with the one he has in Europe and, above all, in his native Denmark. Films such as After the Wedding (S. Bier, 2006), Flame and Citrón (OC Madsen, 2008) or A Real Affair (N. Arcel, 2012) show another face, kinder, equally full of some nooks and crannies that that one already had. confusing seducer who embodied in Torremolinos 73 (P. Berger, 2003). But it is from the hand of Thomas Vinterberg that Mikkelsen has found the most revealing face of him. One that personifies the bewilderment and perplexity of the common man. In The Hunt (2012), the world collapses after a lie. In Another Round, four high school teachers seek to regain the joy of living by always going “happy,” with a 0.05% blood alcohol rate. A toast to life that has taken the festival and awards circuit by storm, and rings out loud for the Oscars.
From the theory to the practice
“You and I have seen each other before,” says Mikkelsen as he starts his virtual meeting with FOTOGRAMAS. “It was on the set of Doctor Strange (S. Derrickson, 2016), right? I’m good at faces, “he laughs before explaining that he sees a very clear reason that justifies his villains in blockbuster cinema:” It’s the accent, giving the role of bad guy who comes from outside. It is something they have always done. What I am looking for is that it is well written because, after all, the villain is the reflection of the hero ”. With Another Round, Mikkelsen didn’t have to worry about the accent or the script. “The only thing I keep in mind when working with Thomas is that they match the schedules,” he says. “I will say yes to everything. He told me the idea for the film right after The Hunt. I already planned to do something with this theory ”, he says of the hypothesis of the Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud according to which the human body has a permanent deficit of alcohol in the blood and that, by remedying it, we are more creative and the stress level is lowered . “I didn’t have the story yet, but I did have a lot of different ideas on how to integrate drinking into the daily routine … And in different jobs. Before deciding to have the characters be teachers, my role was working in a control tower at an airport. You can already get an idea of what was happening ”, he laughs. “It was later when he decided to bring all the characters together in the same environment and that the story revolve around friendship and embracing life. And also about the role of alcohol in our society, of course. But from another point of view. A ton of movies have been made, many great ones, about the dangers of alcohol. Another round tells us about the energy you feel and the ties that are broken with two glasses. Seven cups give rise to another story. And zero drinks, a different one. We try not to preach, to be moralistic or to be oblivious to the problems that it entails, but neither to look the other way and not recognize that drinking is something that humans have been doing for thousands of years ”.
