“Before the War may not always find the right rhythm for all of its ideas, but when it looks directly at the masculine world Guido inhabits, it has a clear and unsettling voice.”

Violence does not always arrive as an extraordinary event. Sometimes it grows quietly inside everyday life, shaped by the place we grow up in, the people around us and the ideas we inherit about being a man. Cinema has often looked at masculinity through violence, but Tommaso Usberti’s Before the War (Prima della guerra) approaches it through the provincial world of Northern Italy’s Po Valley, where aggression has become almost an ordinary part of male life. 

Usberti’s first feature, presented in Venice’s International Critics’ Week, follows Guido (Piero Usberti), a young man whose days are surrounded by drinking, fighting, hunting and guns. He spends time with a group of young men who seem to understand friendship through physical strength and the constant need to prove themselves. Guido belongs to this world without completely understanding what it has made him. Things begin to change when he meets Sonia (Luàna Bajrami), a young Kosovar woman who brings a different kind of presence into his life. Their relationship gives Guido a brief possibility to step outside the world he knows. But another possibility appears at the same time: he is offered the chance to join a foreign mercenary militia. The violence that has existed around him as a social ritual could now become something larger and more dangerous.

Here lies the strongest part of the film. Usberti does not treat toxic masculinity simply as the problem of one violent young man. Instead, he looks at the environment that produces and sustains it. Guido’s body, his friends, the guns, the hunting and the way these men speak to one another all seem to belong to the same language. Violence is already present before Guido makes any major decision. It is in the jokes, the competition, the treatment of animals and the need to hide anything that might look like weakness. The film is especially effective because it does not constantly explain these things to us. It allows the behaviour to speak for itself. There is something disturbing in how normal everything feels. Guido is not simply a villain, nor is he presented as an innocent victim of his surroundings. He is a young man who has learned to understand strength through aggression, and Sonia’s presence makes that understanding less stable. The contrast between these two directions gives the film its emotional tension: one path leads towards a different kind of intimacy, while the other takes Guido further into the violent world he already knows.

Still, the film does not always move with the same strength as its central idea. The main weakness is in the plot and the rhythm of the story. At several points the film feels somewhat scattered, moving between Guido’s relationship with Sonia, his friends, the possibility of joining the militia and the wider world around him, without always giving these threads enough dramatic connection. Some developments feel important but are not given enough time to grow, while other moments seem to slow the story without adding the same weight. Because of this, the film sometimes feels as if it is searching for its strongest narrative direction even though its thematic direction is already very clear. Yet its treatment of violence and toxic masculinity remains remarkably convincing. 

Usberti understands that violence does not necessarily begin with war. It can begin much earlier, in the way a young man is taught to behave, in the way aggression is rewarded by his surroundings and in the fear of appearing vulnerable. Before the War may not always find the right rhythm for all of its ideas, but when it looks directly at the masculine world Guido inhabits, it has a clear and unsettling voice.