A review of the new film “The Aftermath”

The cinema is replete with stories of wartime romances – including the sub-theme of fraternisation with the enemy – but this film is different with a setting just after the Second World War in a Hamburg devastated by British bombing.

Rachael Morgan (Keira Knightley) is a young woman joining her husband Lewis (Jason Clarke), an officer in the British zone of occupation, who finds unexpectedly that they are sharing their requisitioned stately home with the original German occupant Stefan Lubert (Alexander SkargÄrd). Each of these three has suffered the death of a dear one and, in very different ways, is struggling to come to terms with it in a manner which will have fateful consequences for the other two.

Based on a novel by Rhidian Brook, this is a truly moving tale of love and loss, beautifully shot in the Czech Republic. At first, it might seem that the treatment of the German population is overly understanding and compassionate but soon we find Nazi sympathies run deep with serious consequences for the main character.

The film is all the more compelling for having a largely unknown cast. Knightley, in the central role, is the exception in being familar and possible just now over-familiar and it may be that one’s reaction her will colour your judgement of the work either way. For my part, I rate Knightley who I think is growing as an actress as evidenced in such recent work as “Colette”. 


 




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