Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

The Aftermath Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 12, 2019

Maybe there should have been a Marshall Plan for troubled marriages. Now, that’s maybe a cheap and even irrelevant joke, since the strategy to rebuild a wartorn Europe didn’t really take shape until 1948 or so, and The Aftermath occurs in the immediate, well, aftermath of World War II, circa 1945-46. An Allied bombing raid has left the German city of Hamburg in ruins, and a British Colonel named Lewis Morgan (Jason Clarke) is among the forces tasked with living in the city and attempting to get it back to some semblance of normalcy, obviously a difficult assignment given not just the absolute devastation on hand, but the still lingering whiff of Nazism, as evidenced by occasional pushbacks from a small but determined resistance. All of that pales, though, in light of dysfunctions in Morgan’s marriage to Rachael (Keira Knightley), an intermittently stiff upper lip British woman who joins Morgan in Hamburg but is obviously unhappy about it for a number of reasons. Chief among them seems to be that she wasn’t informed beforehand that she and her husband would be occupying (in both senses of the word) a rather luxe mansion previously owned by a well to do architect named Stefan Lubert (Alexander Skarsgård), especially since Lubert and his not exactly friendly daughter Freda (Flora Li Thiemann) are still there, supposedly temporarily before they’re moved to some kind of holding camp facility. When Morgan ultimately offers Lubert and his daughter the chance to remain in the house, albeit largely confined to the attic, Rachael is even unhappier about it all. But there are obviously other wounds, which the film points to so obviously in the early going that any sense of subtext is jettisoned from virtually the get go.

Knightley has always seemed like such a steely presence in many films, perhaps aided and abetted by her forcefully thrust lower jaw, that when she plays characters in the throes of some kind of vulnerability I personally don’t always believe her. That may well be the case again for other viewers with regard to The Aftermath, since one of the underlying plot points is that Rachael is emotionally precarious due to the death of her little son with Morgan which resulted from the German Blitz of London. Rachael finds an unexpected partner in grief in the form of Lubert, who is nursing his own trauma resulting from the death of his wife in the Allied bombing of Hamburg. Can you guess what ensues? If you can’t, you may not have seen enough overheated melodramas featuring mismatched and/or star-crossed lovers thrust together in stressful circumstances.

The Aftermath is one of those glossy quasi-historical films that is really more like a Douglas Sirk melodrama transported to “another place and time”. And in fact some of the film’s depictions of post war Germany are quite interesting, though they’re handled in such a discursive and passing manner that their emotional resonance is arguably pretty limited. Instead, the screenplay by the appropriately named Joe Shrapnel and perhaps less felicitously named Anna Waterhouse (adapting a novel by Rhidian Brook) focuses on all the emotional heaving involving the central ménage à trois of Morgan, Rachael and Lubert, with a sidebar involving the German resistance, which Lubert is suspected of being involved with. It’s all both over the top and weirdly tamped down in that “stiff upper lip” British way, leading to a rather uneven tone that never seems to find a secure foothold.

By the time the illicit dalliance between Rachael and Lubert has spilled into the frosty German countryside, where they engage in a frolicsome snowball fight in order to forget their lost loved ones, The Aftermath may have unintentionally slid (no pun intended, given the setting) into near camp territory. That whole ambience is probably heightened by the overamped emotions hovering just beneath an often staid surface. Performances are quite well done throughout, however, and the film’s physical production is quite opulent, despite the horrors of what “everyday” Germans were experiencing at the time.

The Aftermath Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Aftermath is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Shot with Alexa Minis and presumably finished at a 2K DI, this is a rather winning presentation of an often interesting looking film. A lot of the outdoor material has been graded toward slate grays and ice cold blues, an approach that is coordinated with production design elements (pay attention to how many stragglers out in the cold Hamburg winter are also wearing blue or gray coats). The interior of the Lubert mansion is also impeccably detailed and includes everything from vintage paintings and furniture to then "modernist" items supposedly by such designers as Mies van der Rohe (who is explicitly mentioned in terms of one of the chairs). But what repeatedly struck me in the fine detail department were the fabrics on costumes, which often have almost palpable textures. When not graded, the palette looks natural, often favoring pastels or softer tones, especially for Rachael. Some of the CGI detailing the horrors Hamburg suffered are a tad soft looking, without a surplus of fine detail, but most of those shots are interstitial and tend not to last very long.

The Aftermath Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Aftermath features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that can be quite nicely immersive when given the chance, as in the very opening shot of bombs exploding left to right mid-air (is it London or Hamburg?), where clear panning takes place. Other outdoor scenes, as in the gruesome attempts to dig out corpses from the piles of rubble, also contain notable surround activity, often discretely placed in individual channels. But a lot of this film takes place within the confines of the Lubert mansion, and then often with only two characters at a time within the frame, and so surround activity can tend to be limited to occasional background noises or Martin Phipps' score. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout.

The Aftermath Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 5:56) feature optional audio commentary by James Kent.


• VFX Progressions (1080p; 1:54) also offer optional audio commentary by James Kent. While the emphasis in this film is certainly its (turgid?) dramatic aspect, there are a fair number of visual effects that are utilized, especially in detailing the devastated environment in Hamburg.


• First Look (1080p; 12:09) is a standard issue EPK with interviews, behind the scenes footage and snippets from the completed film.


• Commentary by James Kent


• Gallery (1080p; 2:33) offers either an Auto Advance or a Manual Advance mode. The timing is for the Auto Advance option.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:25)

The Aftermath Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

When this film has Rachael doting over her late son's sweater and touching the tufts of fabric where either shrapnel or some other projectile went through it, presumably killing him, The Aftermath takes mawkishness to a whole new level. The fact that Knightley's seemingly inherent steeliness pokes through even this artifice may seriously undercut the film's ambitions to present Rachael as emotionally fragile. The Aftermath may well appeal to fans of the star trio, but its history is suspect and some of the interpersonal relationships positively Sirkian. Technical merits are first rate for those considering a purchase.