If history is only written by winners it will always only be half-true. As happens so often, Knightley’s commanding presence and extraordinary range of emotional versatility stamps her ownership all over the film. Knightley and Clarke’s performances are outstanding, while Skarsgárd adequately fills the role of a grieving, if over-confident, romantic antagonist. The stunning cinematography captures the horror of the immediate post-war period without the usual reliance on the tropes of military casuality and destruction. It reeks of period authenticity in ways that only British films can do. This film stands out in the war-drama genre because of its nuanced portrait of the immediate aftermath of the Allied occupation of Germany. In the middle of this swirling emotional vortex, a classic ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ sub-plot becomes the narrative device for rebuilding lives. Both lost loved ones and the times are not sympathetic to healing. Deep unresolvable grief permeates the city as well as the lives of the Morgans and the Luberts. Few films respectfully explore the humiliation of defeat and many viewers would ask ‘why should they’? The Aftermath dwells on prolonged moments where the victor strolls in and takes over the home of the vanquished where a population is deliberately starved to keep them compliant where a once-proud culture must confront its inner demons. When someone remarks that more bombs were dropped on Hamburg in one week than were dropped on London in one year, we enter an inverted moral paradigm where the line between victory and vanquished turns grey. Lewis is a compassionate man who cannot bear to send the Luberts to a squalid refugee camp and invites them to stay in the attic, setting the tension lines that drive the film. The thoroughly middle-class Morgans have requisitioned a stately mansion owned by architect Stephan Lubert (Alexander Skarsgárd) and his rebellious daughter Freda (Flora Thiemann). It opens with British Colonel Lewis Morgan (Jason Clarke) and his wife Rachel (Keira Knightley) arriving in the devasted city of Hamburg to restore law and order, as well as to root out remaining Nazi sympathisers. Set in 1946, the plotline is straightforward with few surprises other than its final moments. Some describe it as slow, melodramatic, and predictable, but such labels often reflect unfulfilled viewer expectations rather than an ill-conceived or poorly executed film. Upon finishing the flick, I’d encourage any viewer to read into the bizarre tale.There are many reasons a beautifully made film like The Aftermath (2019) ends up critically panned. One thing worth noting, however, would have to be the fact that Aftermath was based, albeit loosely, on a true story that occurred roughly one hundred years ago, which involved Walburga Oesterreich, a German born American housewife, married to Fred William Oesterreich in Los Angeles. Filmmakers can sometimes be criticised for trying to blend a multitude of genres, but I felt like Aftermath was written well enough to come across as watchable and somewhat enjoyable at the same time. A large majority of the movie, especially the first hour, seemed to come across as a drama that told the rather complicated story of a relationship going through some testing times, while a suspenseful, murder mystery element entered the fray as the screentime wore on. With that being said, Aftermath certainly wasn’t just a horror film. Almost instantaneously, the classic horror cliches you’d expect in such a picture, jumped out as being prevalent from the first minute, right up until the last, with barking dogs, creaking doors, disappearing objects and needlessly long-drawn-out scenes, being just a few on display. Starring: Ashley Greene, Shawn Ashmore, Britt Baron, Diana HopperĪdvertised primarily as a horror, I was a little surprised after sitting down and watching Aftermath – a film released in what seems like dark times for the industry on a whole.
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