There’s a single scene where Stephen’s loyalties are questioned, and it’s really meant to absolve the viewer of any guilt for liking the character. That’s a painfully irresponsible way to look at post-war Germany and what it meant for Germans. Post-war Hamburg is just a backdrop, and the cost of the war really never adds up to more than “There were losses on both sides.”
The post-war setting is rarely used beyond Lewis’ work (which is never made totally clear) and Freda’s relationship with a young Nazi sympathizer, and neither one really delves into the chaos of a post-war setting. Rachael is cold and distant towards Stephen until some scene where she learns Stephen is an individual who has experienced his own sense of loss and not a Nazi sympathizer, and then she’s ready to fall into his arms. However, the distance between Rachael and Lewis leads to an unexpected spark between Rachael and Stephen, who begin an unexpected love affair.Įverything in The Aftermath is woefully underdeveloped.
However, tensions in the household are high as Rachael struggles to forgive the Germans for the death of her young son, and Freda holds the British responsible for the death of her mother. The British government has requisitioned the house belonging to Stephen Lubert ( Alexander Skarsgård) and his daughter Freda ( Flora Thiemann) for the Morgans to use, but the Morgans have allowed the Luberts to stay in the attic rather than live in the camps. Set in Hamburg, Germany five months after the conclusion of World War II, the story follows Rachael Morgan ( Keira Knightley), who has joined her husband Lewis ( Jason Clarke), a British officer. What should be a difficult story about love and loss fails to conjure any emotions whatsoever. If the film wasn’t so lovingly shot and earnestly acted, James Kent’s movie would be kind of gross with how it uses real suffering as a springboard into nothing. The story should delve into interesting questions of guilt and responsibility, and instead it reduces everything to marriage problems and personal rebellion. It features characters going through real hardship in a setting filled with strife, and yet the film never rises above a middling melodrama. McNairy, on the other hand, delivers an emotionally complex portrait of guilt that sporadically provides Aftermath with the dramatic resonance to which it so obviously aspires.It’s almost impressive how The Aftermath studiously avoids being interesting.
But it’s hard not to wonder what a more accomplished thespian would have done in the role. Sporting the scruffy grey beard that, as it did in Maggie, signifies that he’s doing serious acting, Schwarzenegger gives a creditable, underplayed turn. The sole exception is an arresting scene in which Roman, hiding his connection to the event, volunteers at the crash site and discovers his daughter’s body. Director Elliott Lester ( Love is the Drug), employing a relentlessly drab visual palette, fails to provide stylistic imagination to the proceedings. But Gullon, whose previous credits include the far more thematically complex Enemy, doesn’t provide much depth to the schematic storyline, with the result that the film mostly feels like a slow-paced slog featuring a hokey, melodramatic ending. That the two shattered men’s lives would ultimately and tragically intersect becomes apparent from the beginning of Javier Gullon’s screenplay, inspired by a real-life incident.
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