“I had no problem talking,” Mads Mikkelsen’s buttoned-up history teacher Martin boasts of his first crack at getting buzzed on the job early in Thomas Vinterberg’s . Martin is reporting back to his inner circle of drinking buddies following their recent pact to investigate whether coasting through the day on spirits might rejuvenate their humdrum middle-aged existence, yet he’s also hammering home one of Vinterberg’s genuine, if overstated, insights in this high-concept male weepie: for taciturn men like Martin, Vinterberg suggests, substance abuse can be a boon as well as an impediment to communication. This thwarts the kind of easy sociological insights or pronouncements about masculinity in crisis that both audiences and Martin and his team of amateur scientists are seeking, and it makes what starts off as a
