Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Keira Knightley, Jason Clarke, Martin Compston, Kate Phillips, Jannik Schumann, Fionn O’Shea, Alexander Scheer, Flora Thiemann, Tom Bell, Jim High, Anna Katherina Schimirigk, Abigail Rice, Iva Sindelkova, Logan Hillier, Joseph Arkley, Fredrick Preston, Claudia Vasekova.
There was always so much to be lost by both sides as the months following the end of World War Two ran its course, to the Allies who defeated the evil of Fascism, the remains of the resistance was always going to be one in which in the ultimate sacrifices were going to be made. For the German people, the ordinary people who had no intention of fighting for such a regime but had to survive anyway they could, they too paid a heavy price but in terms of harbouring a resentment that was confused, sheltering in the skeleton like bomb damaged houses and knowing that they would be held to account for the atrocities committed by their masters.
It is easy to see hate, easy to give in to the overtures of loathing, it starts with believing that the people that you have inflicted damage upon deserve it, that a nation, a people, all think the same way and for that they should be punished, and yet in the victory the side that has won through, liberated a vast swathes of people should be magnanimous, try to see the war through the eyes of those left with nothing.
The Aftermath is such that it can be seen as impossible to keep a distance, to respect the other side, especially when you are still dealing with raw emotions, a lost family member, the image of the dead. You can either rise above it and shut off all your passions, or you succumb to the hunger and the urge to seek retribution, to fall for what you have long since loathed.
Based upon Rhidian Brook’s novel, The Aftermath sees this tug of war between the soul and the heart as one which asks the watcher to seek out the truth of reconciliation, that whilst the heart may appear closed off, what instead happens is that agony and separation become forces in which the mind becomes susceptible to propaganda, a reflection of the affair that Germany had Nazism, and one that is shown perhaps too readily between Alexander Skarsgard’s Stefan Lubert and Keira Knightley’s Rachael Morgan.
It is through perhaps the minor character of Burnham in which the story hinges, played by Martin Compston, Burnham shows the angry face of the British Army, steeled by war, he has no issues or reluctance in goading any German he feels is deserving of insult or pain; the conflict causing his own deep-seated prejudice to be examined.
A film which seeks the reasons to forgiveness, The Aftermath arguably focuses fully on one relationship with an almost voyeuristic glee, and not enough on the ache in which war seeks to make monsters of ourselves and how we can overcome it. A passionate film but one that it seems is happy to come at the issues from the wrong angle.
Ian D. Hall