Rent The Aftermath (2019)

The Aftermath review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Aftermath is a post-WWII drama that feels as though it’s trying to ring out every lingering last drop of national tension. Reduced to the nooks of Hamburg’s populace during the reconstruction, this is a weary wandering of trying to find a way out of a troubled past and into a new future. Despite some admirable performances, this picture doesn’t dig up anything all that profound that hasn’t already been explored in previously quiet films of a very tense time following the war.

It’s 1946 and Rachael Morgan (Kiera Knightley) has come to Hamburg for her husband, the English Colonel Lewis (Jason Clarke). His task of rebuilding Germany in its postwar state is not going particularly well considering the issues of Nazi insurgents fighting back. As they reunite during the cold winter months, they’ve become bitter over losing their son during the blitz and now having to reside in a house with German guests. The guests of architect Stefan Lubert and his teenage daughter Freda Lubert. Though Lewis seems content to let them stay in the attic, Rachel is less than thrilled. This distaste is easy enough to see considering how Lewis has spent enough time among the Germans after the war for the othering nature of the events to have subsided. But for a woman who only knew Germans from who they have killed, the thought of being in the same house as a German is infuriating.

But since the postwar clean up is going slow as the Nazis are slowly flushed out, there’s time for understanding when the bombings have ceased. Over time, Rachel connects with Stefan as they have quite a bit in common. In particular, Stefan lost his wife during an Allied bombing. They connect well. Too well. To the point of having an affair. And with the questioning of Stefan still being on the side of the Nazis, there’s a swirling of war and love stirred with a spoon of melodrama, a peppering of murder as well.

This is a film that becomes somewhat frustrating in what seems to start off as an anti-war drama and then transforms itself into one more concerned with affairs and alliances. As the film progresses, there’s less concern over how European relations will continue and more of a bitter will-they-won’t-they drama meant to be a little more steamy than intriguing. And perhaps that was the intent with such a picture but when it starts with such lofty aspirations and merely dashes them intensity, there’s a bitterness to the picture in all the worst ways.

Aftermath has less to say about the war and more to say about Kiera Knightley can weasel her way into a period piece that borders on soap opera with a dreary touch. Of the many postwar dramas out there, this one certainly has some strong performances and a few surprises here and there. But surely there’s more to the postwar reconstruction than a somber romance of love triangles most tragic. From another perspective, one could look at the film as an example of how reconstructing the region will take far more than bricks to rebuild, that it’ll also take a love that has yet to meld back into the country. Of course, that all depends on how much of that you can see in a picture that has a strange death by icy waters.