Don Shanahan
The tight-knit group of World War I soldiers from Australia and New Zealand depicted in Before Dawn–in theaters and on digital July 19, 2024—are shown to have adopted a certain foreign saying into their lexicon. The have championed the French phrase “c’est la guerre,” and it means “that’s war; it can’t be helped.” While there is camaraderie shared among the ANZACs who’ve taken the proper pronunciation and usage challenges to share “c’est la guerre” in the right moments, it is not a clever catchphrase among friends or a rallying cry for a shared plight.
No, in Before Dawn “c’est la guerre” constitutes defeatism because, more often than not, war cannot be helped by the grunts in the dirt holding or pushing a line. These young men who are uttering the phrase halfway around the world from their homes and families have learned the futility of their actions. They say it knowing they are trapped in what they thought would be a heroic quest and a patriotic cause. Instead, they have found a nightmare of apathy and loss where, heaven forbid, “c’est la guerre” and its admission of hopeless despair could be a man’s last words.
Carrying the meaning of that French phrase paired with thematic performance, one will find the jaded headspace and depressed heart of Before Dawn. When the film opens on the date of Friday, February 18, 1916, the camera descends into the filthy and dangerous conditions in the Somme for the 44th Battalion. 189 days before this setting-establishing introduction, the featured young man by the name of Jim Collins (former Pan and A Wrinkle in Time child actor Levi Miller) was working the horsebacked grind of his father Matthew’s (Ben Mortley of Zelos) sheep ranch in the outback of western Australia. Feeling old enough to define himself as a man, Jim leaves with his mates and fellow farmhands (including fellow grown-up child actor Ed Oxenbould from Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day) to join the perceived patriotic duty of over 38% of the entire male population of the Australian nation during the Great War.
Written by Jarrad Russell and director Jordan Prince-Wright, the team behind The Decadent and the Depraved, from a collection of diary entries from ANZAC soldiers, Before Dawn stitches together time-marked episodes of incidents involving Jim, his close friends, and his consistent superiors. Taking prominent roles in the ensemble are Myles Pollard of X-Men Origins: Wolverine as the cagey and resourceful Sgt. Beufort and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes cast member Travis Jeffrey as the capricious fellow infantryman Thomas Nickels. Other rabble grunts including Jordan Dulieu of Everything in Between, Home and Away TV star Tim Franklin, and Oscar Millar of Apples Never Fall. Edited by short film specialist Saxon Wright, the days begin in the double-digits before increasing to number into the hundreds as Levi Miller’s voiceover conveys his character’s progression of both experience, fear, loyalty, and acceptance.
Jim learns quickly that there’s little to no wiggle room when it comes to the actions and expectations of a lowly soldier running side-by-side with the futility of this particular war. One of his narrations defines the circumstances as “Every decision here seems final, even if it’s a mistake or not, even if we know it doesn’t matter.” He’s not wrong, and the painful level of impassiveness in Before Dawn is strong.
The helpful and altruistic Jim is not a killer. When he lets a German soldier go during a night operation on the other side of the wire instead of eliminating him or taking him prisoner, the retreating enemy gives away his group’s location, setting off a counterattack that costs lives. Hesitation and mercy are mindful character traits, but ill-fitting of a soldier. Nickels never lets Jim live that error down and our protagonist is saddled with that regret forever forward.
While that grief becomes a corrective motivation to become a better soldier, it also makes Jim question this entire decision to enlist. With an often repeated thoughts of “If only I listened” and “If only I stayed home,” he thinks often of his disapproving father and how he thought he didn’t respect him going to war, only to see that his warnings of consequences have all come true. In trying to make his family proud, he’s found more fear and exhaustion than mate-ship and glory, something incredibly common among soldiers in any war.
For a smaller international feature, Before Dawn put admirable production value into that very setting of fear, exhaustion, and danger. Jordan Prince-Wright elected for a great deal of outdoor location shooting over green screen where the experience of the trenches– especially the never-ending mud crafted by set decorator and second assistant director Chloe Evensen– has an haunting and accurate level of ugliness. The costumes of Penny Mackie (stunt costumer on Thor: Love and Thunder) and the makeup work from Liz Gruszka (Miss Sloane) hold up to what everything appears to be caked in. When the picture gets moving, the stuntwork and mock squibs and explosions choreographed by pyrotechnics coordinator and supervisor Ken Boyland put the actors right in the thick of it all.
The difficult part about Before Dawn is how the passage of time causes it to float in malaise. The action wears down as does Jim’s heavy path to contrition. The score from Pignorant composer Sean Tinnion is nondescript and plaintive. Granted, not every aspect, chapter, or account of war is or needs to be a barnburning thriller, so those doldrums are accurate to large degree, but not altogether poignant to a higher plane. Before Dawn wants to be Australia’s answer to Sam Mendes’s award-winning instant classic 1917, but the suspense and emotionality are decidedly lower. Still, the film represents its origins honorably and with deeply commendable intent. That will also count positively.
