6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
In the aftermath of World War II, a British colonel and his wife are assigned to live in Hamburg during the post-war reconstruction, but tensions arise with the German widower who lives with them.
Starring: Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgård, Jason Clarke, Martin Compston, Kate PhillipsWar | 100% |
Romance | 36% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
French: Dolby Digital 5.1
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1
English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Digital copy
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
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.
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 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.
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.
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