There's something unrelenting about the light of dawn. While sunsets invariably cloak the world in a rosy glow that makes everything seem more romantic, the merciless glare of sunrise has the opposite effect, casting every wrinkle and imperfection in a grim, unflattering light. Appropriately, the acidic Swedish drama Daybreak begins at the crack of dawn and showcases humanity at its absolute worst, chronicling a dark night of the soul that lasts well beyond the first flash of sunlight.
Enlivening its incisive drama with blasts of pitch-black humor, the film interweaves three stories of people giving into their basest, least-honorable instincts. In one, an overworked bricklayer with little time for his family agrees to work for an eccentric, wealthy older couple so terrified of the outside world that they ask him to brick up their windows and doors, essentially turning their apartment into a crypt. It doesn't seem at all coincidental that the eccentric husband—who is so terrified of the outside world that he'd rather commit himself and his wife to a slow, drawn-out suicide than engage it on any level—not only expresses admiration for the U.S., but even offers to pay the bricklayer in American currency. He even parrots the ultimate canard of the archetypal Ugly American (which he is in spirit, if not nationality), the belief that were it not for the U.S., they'd all be speaking German. In the next episode, a bitter divorcée seemingly kept alive solely by rage and bitterness holds her well-to-do ex-husband and his much younger new love hostage while she airs a lifetime's worth of grudges and resentments. Later, an arrogant, womanizing surgeon loses his job and must confront the consequences of his infidelity with the wife of a good friend.
Daybreak strikes a delicate a balance tonally. With its callous, vindictive characters and spiteful dialogue, it could easily devolve into brittle misanthropy. Instead it maintains a strong enough sense of squirmy humanity that its characters' epiphanies and emotional growth feel both hard-earned and richly deserved. Even the film's most absurd storyline—the one involving the wealthy couple desperate to keep out the encroaching world—boasts a surprising ring of emotional truth in addition to serving as a lyrical metaphor for the self-defeating insanity of xenophobia. Emotionally apocalyptic at times, but committed to at least the possibility of salvation, Daybreak boldly wades through a whole lot of darkness on its way to the light.