Author: pASslosS
This week, the annual hit "Alcohol Project" with Uncle Mai’s dance came as scheduled. This film focusing on the middle-aged crisis and alcoholism was not only selected for the Cannes Film Festival, but also won the 33rd European Film Awards for Best Picture. , Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Actor Awards. In addition, the film was also a great success in Denmark, after which it will compete for the 93rd Oscar for Best International Film on behalf of Denmark.
Checking the timeline, it turns out that the last collaboration between Max Mickelson and director Thomas Winterberg was eight years ago. At that time, the "Hunting" between the two helped Uncle Mai to win the Cannes actor, and then he started a part-time professional career as a sexy and charming villain. Hannibal, Casillas in "Doctor Strange", physics scientist Galen Erso in "A Star Wars Story: Rogue One", and Gellert who is about to replace Depp in "Fantastic Beasts 3" Grindelwald... There is no doubt that he is one of the best male actors of his generation in both art and commercial films.
Director Thomas Winterberg is one of the initiators of the "Dougma 95 Manifesto". His two most famous works are "Family Banquet" and "Hunting" , both of which challenge established ethics and morals. Excavated the dark side of human nature.
Compared with the depression in Winterberg's past works, the new film "The Alcohol Project" is slightly relaxed. After all, the anxiety caused by the mid-life crisis is a common problem in modern society.
Uncle Mai plays the high school history teacher Martin in the film . His class is boring and chaotic, and the preface is not followed by the postscript . It is so bad that he is collectively interviewed by the parents of the students.
Twelve years ago, Martin's future was full of possibilities. Research funding and Ph.D. were all in front of him, but because of his family, he refused them all. Martin today is no longer worthy of the glorious past.
Martin has three friends, physical education teacher Tommy , music teacher Peter, and psychology teacher Nicola . Life is a torture for these men, although they did not experience any devastating ups and downs.
Tommy was alone and childless, only with Laban, a dog who was too old to walk.
Nicholas married a wealthy wife and owned real estate by the sea, but the happiness of the marriage of the couple was deprived of all three children waiting to be fed.
Compared with them, Martin’s plight is more typical: his wife Anika is used to his absence, and the two children treat him as strangers. They are not so much a family as they are roommates living under one roof. .
The film does not provide more information to explain where this irreconcilable contradiction comes from. The audience can only see the current situation of the tragedy.
However, it is obvious that his wife Anika is not a "rejection" attitude towards Martin, but rather an impatience. Shortly after the beginning of the film, it was implied that a broken mirror would be difficult to achieve. In fact, Martin was already "out".
One night, four friends went out to celebrate Nicolas’s 40th birthday. After confessing to the common middle-aged dilemma, Martin , who was not drinking alcohol, tried this champion single product that has been used by mankind to relieve worries for thousands of years. So I realized the magic of "soul return".
In order to rationalize alcoholism, they began to experiment with a pseudo-scientific theory. The theory believes that drinking moderately during the working day can increase work efficiency, improve character image, and help them re-establish contact with work and personal life. Whether at school or at home, day or night, the four men will remain mildly drunk throughout the day, monitor the alcohol concentration and record their personal status at any time.
Martin quickly regained his enthusiasm for lectures, and was as ecstatic as a monkey found a bamboo basket for fishing the moon. He is like a novice alcoholic, trying to separate his alcoholism from his personal taste.
In the history class, Martin told the students about his new hero, Churchill, who wrote many great books throughout his life and saved the world from fascism. Martin can't wait to attribute all of Churchill's achievements to alcohol. Even if science can't prove that people are lacking so little alcohol in their blood, he can sophistry that the blood of "human civilization" is all alcohol.
Interestingly, Winterberg doesn't seem to want to criticize the stifling of the soul by alcohol, because alcoholism is everywhere. People always appear drunk everywhere, and the director even edited a drunken montage of global leaders, from German Chancellor Merkel to British Prime Minister Johnson to former US President Clinton.
Alcohol can sometimes be a panacea. It can help people who are lost get back to life, live in a more ideal state, and make them feel excited about the boring daily life.
With a drink of red wine, Martin proposed to his wife a boat trip that had not been realized in eight years, and with the help of alcohol, he tried to save his family. However, it is foreseeable that these changes will require a high price.
The simple truth is that if a person reaches a peak after drinking, then it is equivalent to living in hell without drinking alcohol. After being tamed by alcohol, the four men completely deviated from the original goal-a normal life.
Entering the third stage of self-destructive nature, they began to drink more vigorously. This action is to finally vent, challenge the limit, drink until you lose consciousness, drink until death, drink until you turn into ghosts, drink to wet the bed.
In fact, this stage can be called "mental suicide". It is completely an alcoholic version of "Elite Feast" . That movie uses food to summon the god of death, and the four men in this film use alcohol to complete the ritual. They drank waste, scurried around the world, and briefly experienced unrestrained freedom.
What is surprising is that "Alcohol Project" really captures the charm of "wine" to "drunkards". A glass of crystal liquid is like a lover of a middle-aged man, and its enchanting liquid body is smashed by various cups. The outline is closed.
They may be wines full of background stories, with different origins, crafts, and vintages, but for alcoholics, their greatest significance is simply that this is a glass of alcohol that makes people dementia.
In the film, alcohol is treated as a character that obscures moral motives. Drinking is sometimes taboo, sometimes a savior, and sometimes death.
Peter suggested that an examinee who had collapsed before the exam "drink a few sips". Alcohol gave him amazing self-confidence during the interview. But this inevitably makes people worry that alcohol may ruin him in the future. Tommy is an example.
He was punished by the school because he was drunk, and since then, his world is left with only an aging remnant, so he chose to take the old dog Laban and rush to death.
Before he died, he said to Martin "It's meaningless" because he discovered that Martin came to visit not out of friendship, he just had nowhere to go.
He has been hollowed out by alcohol.
There is a detail in the film. Director Winterberg dedicated the film to his 19-year-old daughter Ida at the end of the film. Ida originally played a small role in the film, but lost his life in a traffic accident before the film started.
Death always makes the living doubt the meaning of life. In the movie, Martin carried the coffin for his dead friend Tommy, and outside the movie, the director carried the coffin for his daughter.
The ending credits of "The Alcohol Project" are the most exciting. Winterberg tends to write scripts for specific actors, so Martin used to be a dancer like Uncle Mai in terms of character setting.
They spent two days filming the final climax. Martin in the film experienced the worst day of his life, and also experienced the best day of his life. This scene may be the beginning of the awakening, or it may be the embers of the collapse, you can not determine the direction of the plot.
It is said that Uncle Mai jumped on the cobblestone road for four or five hours, and the young man's huge youth energy ignited him. Winterberg thinks this is a complex emotional manifestation: "Part of Martin wants to fly, and part of Martin wants to drown."
But in the final analysis, the "Alcohol Project" is more of a male-centered emotional extension. It is the product of middle-aged men focusing on resolving personal trauma. The film just wants to smooth the men's own mental journey rather than connect with the outside world, so Martin's frustrated wife has almost no room for character development.
The beginning of the film quoted a quote from the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard :
What is youth? Nan Ke Yimeng. What is love? The creation in the dream is nothing.
When people reach middle age, everything becomes empty, tired, melancholy, and angry. Middle-aged men long for their golden age, but the good times are no longer, and life is a solid piece, which will only follow a clearly visible downward parabola after the peak. Disappearing.
In order to satisfy the mental hunger and thirst, to escape the embarrassment, and to deal with the uncontrollable situation, alcohol has become the Satan that middle-aged men choose with their free will. Uncle Mai's complicated interpretation of Martin also allowed "The Alcohol Project" to rise from the absurdity of a drunkard to a life rehearsal with a sad background.
The soundtrack in the film is Scarlet Pleasure 's "What A Life" . It was Winterberg's wife who thought of this song that fits the plot and the psychology of the characters.
The words Martin has always used to numb himself and his wife in the film are three affirmative sentences:
I love my wife, I love my family, and I love my job.
This sentence is as terrible as "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" in "The Shining". When people reach middle age, they all start the same horror movie.
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