The Aftermath is Uneven, but Better than Advertised

The Aftermath (2019)

Directed by James Kent

Fox Searchlight Pictures, 108 minutes, R (brief nudity)

★★★

The Aftermath, a British post-World War II romantic drama, is based on the namesake novel by Rhidian Brook. The title holds a double meaning. First, it is set in the firebombed ruins of Hamburg, Germany, immediately after the war; second, it also deals with the emotional aftershock of personal loss.

Colonel Lewis Morgan (Jason Clarke) arrives in the British sector at a time in which thousands of Hamburg residents are homeless and combing through rubble looking for loved ones, food, and possessions. The city is also a hotbed of Werwolf activity, it being the Nazis’ answer to the underground–a movement formed in late 1944 to foment resistance to occupiers via assassination and terror.

Morgan is ensconced in digs he’d never come close to in Ye Olde England. The sleek and well-appointed estate of modernist architect Stefan Lubert (Alexander Skarsgård) has been seized for Clarke’s use as a headquarters. Morgan sends for his wife Rachel (Keira Knightley) to join him and things sour from the start. She does not understand why he’d bring her to a city of death and destruction, hates Germans, and is contemptuous of Lubert and his oh-so-utterly-unlike-England house. She wants Lubert, his teenaged daughter Freda (Flora Thiemann), and their housekeeper sent to the relocation camps.

Morgan, though, is an idealist who wants to help Germany rebuild. He tries to befriend locals and has bonded with Lubert, whose wife was killed in the bombing of the city. Morgan understands (though he hasn’t come to grips with) loss, as his and Rachel’s son Michael was killed during the Blitz of London. He’d like to allow the family to stay, as there is plenty of room and Lubert is amenable to staying in the attic. Try telling that to a 14-year-old who viscerally dislikes the English as much as most of them hate Germans. Increasingly she skips school to help dig out the city and falls under the sway of Albert, a young Werwolf firebrand. Other English officers and friends warn Morgan that he is naïve and that sentiment grows as Werwolf killings increase. He is determined, though, to apply the velvet glove rather than an iron fist.

Perhaps Morgan should have been warned against leaving his wife at home with a stud like Alexander Skarsgård! Rachel’s attitudes shift and a dangerous liaison develops. The Aftermath shifts from Hamburg to reconciling passion, reason, and grief. It’s a good story that’s competently told, though one usually expects more than just competence in a film and this one is no exception. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the movie, yet it feels flat and over-mannered. It is difficult to present emotionally gutted characters in a convincing manner–especially when it’s so obvious that libidos aren’t even in the same book, let alone on the same page, as their brains. Perhaps the novel developed these themes better, but Rachel’s turnabout is too sudden and Lubert’s icy distancing melts like some one fired up a blowtorch. One also wonders why desperate Hamburg residents hadn’t confiscated parts of his estate.

Oddly, the characters who remain emotionally shut down the longest are the most convincing. Thiemann strikes a fine balance between defiance and vulnerability–just as one expects from someone in their early teens. Clarke, who looks like a bit like a young Colm Meany in this film, also stays in character until it makes sense to shift. His demeanor of hard work and dedication is compensatory, but it makes sense. I suspect that director James Kent and the screenplay of James Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse are more to blame for gaps in the performances of Skårsgard and Knightley, though I always find myself thinking two things in Keira Knightley films: (a) She’s a poor man’s Natalie Portman, and (b) she should be tied to a table and force-fed a sandwich.

Critics savaged The Aftermath, though I give it a qualified thumb’s up. It brings to life grainy black and white photos of Germany in the days in which the war is over, but smoke still rises from the ruins and peace remains fragile. Its foreshortened look at wartime loss notwithstanding, it also gives us a glance at how individuals clear out the wreckage of personal trauma. It’s often the case that those blocks are harder to move than the walls and foundations of ruined buildings. The Aftermath could have been a better film than it was, but its faults don’t warrant its critical beat-down.

Rob Weir