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‘The Aftermath’ Review: Illicit Passion in Postwar Hamburg

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

• March 14, 2019

“The Aftermath” opens in 1945 and could easily have been made then, too. An old-fashioned wartime romance whose plot highlights are recognizable from outer space, this gleaming dollop of prestige comfort food is neither logically coherent nor emotionally satisfying.

It is, though, stunningly pretty as Rachael (Keira Knightley), a resentful British Army wife, arrives in bombed-out Hamburg to join her high-ranking husband, Lewis (Jason Clarke).

“It’s chaos out there,” Lewis remarks as they drive through perfectly scattered rubble, yet this stolid, stagy movie transmits no sense of destabilization. As if to remedy that, we meet Stephan (Alexander Skarsgard, resplendent in a series of snazzy woolen jumpers), the lonesome German widower whose luxurious home Lewis has requisitioned. Stephan and his troubled daughter (Flora Thiemann) might have obligingly moved into the attic, but that won’t stop him from doing some requisitioning of his own.

Few can smolder like Skarsgard, yet his inevitable affair with Rachael has little heat. Each has a heartbreaking reason to distrust the other; but instead of exploring the wary psychological dance between victor and vanquished, grief and acceptance, the director, James Kent (working from Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse’s adaptation of Rhidian Brook’s 2013 novel), leaps from hostility to adultery with preposterous speed. While the cinematographer, Franz Lustig, conjures gauzy flashbacks and glowing glamour shots, promising subplots — like Stephan’s possibly murky past and his daughter’s dalliance with a dangerous young Hitler sympathizer — are hastily snuffed out.

Had Kent ( who excelled in 2015 with the World War I drama “Testament of Youth” ) diverted a fraction of the cost of his lavish production design to beefing up the screenplay, this corny melodrama might have had a chance of pleasing our minds as much as our eyes.

Rated R. Sexy knitwear and afternoon delight. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes.

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‘The Aftermath’ (2019) | Film Review

The Aftermath plays out like the setting it takes place in; weirdly distant and feels as if you are checking your watch to find out how much time you have left. The period-romance drama is a throwback to inept films of the ’80s and ’90s, where they take a major event as a backdrop as an excuse to tell a romance novel on the big screen. Shining Through , the 1992 Michael Douglas and Melanie Griffith romantic World War Two drama, is a good example of this. Using the fight against Hitler to highlight a great romance.

When you strip away James Kent’s setting of the Reconstruction of Germany, all you have is a desperate housewife having an affair with the pool boy. To make matters worse, the script by Joel Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse tries so hard to make everyone likable in some way. There is no real allegiance to pin your hat to.

Based on the novel by Rhidian Brook, of the same name, the film is set during postwar Hamburg, Germany. All during a cold winter in 1946. Rachael Morgan ( Keira Knightly ) steps off a train to meet her estranged (being a colonel in the British army during WW2 will do that) husband Lewis ( Pet Sematary’s Jason Clarke ), whose job has been rebuilding a city that bomb strikes have obliterated.

Strangely, even though they are there to help the citizens of Hamburg, families are displaced from the homes that remain standing in camps to make room for British soldiers. Rachael and Lewis are about to move into a despondent German widower ( Alexander Skarsgard ) house, complete with a staff, and his daughter Freda (Flora Thiemann), whose idealist passions are endangering their place in their home when the camps are just a few miles away.

Of course, nothing good can come of a lonely yet beautiful wife in the same house, with a husband who is never home. A man who is a handsome, tall, blonde-haired man that looks like what Hitler envisioned when he wanted to take over the world. He happens to chop a lot of wood in front of her. The lack of a premium cable subscription to pass the time doesn’t help matters. Skarsgard and Knightley do generate a fair amount of heat. Still, it’s a romance based on their characters reaching out to one another based on personal losses. The way it unfolds is not natural and feels forced upon us from the moment Rachael walks into the house.

Then there is the issue of Jason Clarke, who I am starting to worry is going to develop a complex as he keeps getting typecast into roles as the husband or boyfriend women either cheat on ( The Aftermath, Mudbound ), want to leave ( The Great Gatsby ), or even kill ( Serenity ). Lewis’s character is the only three-dimensional character in the film. It gives a moving performance of a man of conviction who has been carrying a great sorrow. He has no way to release it. It’s a performance that sneaks up on you by the end of the film. I am not sure enough to see it before turning it off and moving on to something else.

There is a difference between war-torn romances like The Aftermath compared to masterpieces like Cold War. T he setting in the Kent drama subplots is contrived, erroneous, and far south as being nuanced as it is one can get. While pleasing to the eye, Aftermath’s attempt at romance and the reconstruction period is in vain in the way it only goes skin deep for most of the script. James Kent’s film would have been much more interesting if they tackled the setting as its central theme, let the romantic betrayal be a subplot, then turn a contrived storyline of German protests into something subtler and more meaningful.

Article by Marc Miller

Marc Miller (also known as M.N. Miller) joined Ready Steady Cut in April 2018 as a Film and TV Critic, publishing over 1,600 articles on the website. Since a young age, Marc dreamed of becoming a legitimate critic and having that famous “Rotten Tomato” approved status – in 2023, he achieved that status.

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‘The Aftermath’ Review: Keira Knightley and Alexander Skarsgård Star in Mopey WWII Romance

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As elegant post-war dramas about dark, romantic entanglements go, “ The Aftermath ” delivers the bare minimum. Director James Kent’s adaptation of Rhidian Brook’s novel is a sweeping, gorgeous, and even wistful look at the clandestine romance between the wife of a British colonel ( Keira Knightley ) and a German widower ( Alexander Skarsgård ) in the aftermath of the Allied forces’ victory. But none of the pretty imagery or impassioned lovemaking can break free of a mopey old formula that sits on every scene with the same schematic quality that makes its weary setting so familiar from the start.

Which is not to say it lacks historical vision. Set in Hamburg in 1945, as British forces sort through the ruins and overtake German property, “The Aftermath” finds Knightley’s Rachael Morgan arriving in the city to reunite with her estranged husband Lewis (a stern Jason Clarke). As British forces requisition German homes, Lewis has found one for the couple to resettle. But once they get there, Rachael discovers that the potential for a new beginning comes with a twist: The house’s former inhabitants, Skarsgård’s German architect Stefan Lubert and his daughter Freda (Flora Thiemann), continue to live there while British forces determine whether to exonerate the man of a war crime.

The chemistry is palpable from the moment that lanky Herr Lubert first locks eyes with Rachael, even if she has a hard time sorting it out. Initially baffled by her husband’s willingness to share their abode with a potential war criminal, she casts a condescending gaze whenever he drifts through the hallways, hovering in the shadows with ghostly remove. Over time, however, she finds a mutual lost soul, recognizing that both of them have suffered irrevocable wartime losses that only the spark of companionship can hope to heal.

“The Aftermath” is about as treacly and earnest as that description, and mostly unfolds as a watchable two-hander just a few degrees shy of dull. Kent frames the drama with meaningful glances and ham-fisted emotional showdowns, but cinematographer Frantz Lustig’s delicate imagery ensures that the movie radiates with a complex sense of place.

From the abrupt overhead bombings that open the story to an abrupt showdown on an icy lake, “The Aftermath” delivers extraordinary imagery in tune with an environment both palatial and marred by destruction. Even the sappier bits have a polished exterior. Yes, it’s a tired cliché to have Knightly sit at the living room’s piano under the blue hue of moonlight, playing “Clair de Lune” until she bursts into tears, but the imagery is nonetheless captivating for how it exudes the alienation of a postwar society that once took stability for granted.

Yet no pretty pictures can salvage “The Aftermath” from sinking into familiar melodramatic beats, and it’s here that the actors fail to convince. Knightley and Skarsgård do their best to imbue the material with an erotic charge, but there’s a mechanical quality to their scenes that never quite clicks. Knightley excels at conveying the desperation and desire of a woman keen on rekindling a modicum of passion in a cold world, but Skarsgård — a handsome Swede who sulks like a pro — fails to convince as a native German-speaker grappling with fatherhood and his own festering desires. As the music swells to accompany their evocative lovemaking under bright lights, it’s hard to escape the sensewe’ve been here many times before.

The best star-crossed WWII love stories approach the entangled forces of danger and lust with intrigue (think Paul Verhoeven’s “Black Book”), but “The Aftermath” lacks the necessary depth to explore this unusual bond and instead takes Stefan’s claim of innocence at face value. As if to take the onus off that question, the movie shoehorns in a thin subplot involving Stefan’s daughter romancing a Nazi spy, setting the stage for a convenient climax that brings the full scope of the relationship challenge to the foreground.

Once it gets there, the final moments of “The Aftermath” head straight into the most obvious cinematic touchstone in film history, a weepy finale alongside a moving train. Nevertheless, there’s genuine feeling to these closing moments, as Knightley’s character must sort out her conflicting emotions toward her husband, and he confronts his own repressed feelings about how the war has pulled them apart. “The Aftermath” shows enough reverence for this intimate challenge to hints at some measure of profundity. But it takes a long time to get there, and by then, much of “The Aftermath” feels like an afterthought.

Fox Searchlight will release “The Aftermath” on March 15, 2019.

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Summary In 1946 postwar Germany, Rachael Morgan (Keira Knightley) arrives in the ruins of Hamburg in the bitter winter, to be reunited with her husband Lewis (Jason Clarke), a British colonel charged with rebuilding the shattered city. But as they set off for their new home, Rachael is stunned to discover that Lewis has made an unexpected decisi ... Read More

Directed By : James Kent

Written By : Joe Shrapnel, Anna Waterhouse, Rhidian Brook

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‘The Aftermath’ Film Review: Keira Knightley Stars in a Post-War Romance Lacking in Passion

There’s a worthwhile hotbed of enmity, grief and lust to explore in this Germany-set love triangle, but the execution is tastefully flat

From the wreckage of Allied-bombed Hamburg comes the post-World War II romantic triangle “The Aftermath,” and suddenly the problems of three little people amount to a hill of blah in this handsomely mounted, but hopelessly machine-pressed game of who are sacrificing more to escape the rubble of shattered desire and lingering grief.

Director James Kent’s adaptation of Rhidian Brook’s 2014 novel — about a ghost-like Germany, a broken British marriage, and the healing powers of a passionate thaw — has the unfortunate quality of a hot-blooded soap grafted onto rather than merged with a historical-political drama. The result exhibits little feel for how each genre’s particular needs might interfere with the other’s, or how the film’s trio of capable actors (Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgård, and Jason Clarke) might be properly utilized.

When one considers the cinematic legacy of post-war Germany sagas alive to the colorful simmer of one-time enemies in close quarters — Billy Wilder’s “A Foreign Affair,” Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “The Marriage of Maria Braun,” Christian Petzold’s “Phoenix” — it makes the dashed potential of “The Aftermath” all the more frustrating.

Early on, there’s promise in the thick, snowy air of polite discomfort coursing through Brook’s scenario. Arriving in Hamburg five months after the Allied victory, Rachael Morgan (Knightley) is eager to be reunited with husband Lewis (Clarke), a conscientious British colonel overseeing a defeated, devastated city’s reconstruction. With the tragic loss of their son during a London bombing raid still a fresh memory, Rachael finds it disconcerting that in requisitioning a grand estate on the banks of the Elbe for them to live in, the charitably-minded Lewis insists its owner-architect, Stefan Lubert (Skarsgård), a war widower, and his aggrieved teenaged daughter, Freda (Flora Thiemann), remain as tenants, albeit in the attic.

Rachael does her stiff-upper-lip best to play nice around the gracious if glum Stefan, but she’s suspicious, quick to believe the gossip from a fellow military wife (Kate Phillips, “Peaky Blinders”) that any outline of a removed painting in a German house — like the one prominently featured in the Luberts’ — surely must have held a portrait of Hitler.

But as with conquered cities, dividing a house into foreign zones, no matter how well-intentioned, can turn boundaries into alluring points of trespass. With the intimacy-challenged Lewis routinely called away, almost overeager to play do-gooder for a displaced populace, Rachael is left to find a connection with the sensitive, artistic German upstairs who mourns like her and who looks good chopping wood. (Yes, there’s actually a scene in which she stares at him from a window.) And Stefan, having noticed the chill between his new landlords, is only too happy to address his own loneliness by breaking the growing sexual tension.

Fair enough, as potboilers go. Why, then, does “The Aftermath” always blandly signal its every development, rather than put you in sync with its characters’ percolating feelings? The screenplay, credited to Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse (“Race”), and author Brook, is too bogged down with uninspired dialogue (“What is it you want from me?”) and clichéd set-ups (bandaging a wound, really?). Subsequently, the heart can never truly race for either the adultery or a flabby side story involving a guerrilla insurgency among displaced Nazi youth, a plot element that seems to exist only to make up in contrived endangerment what the main love story lacks in sexual peril.

But even outside the gravitas-challenged drama, director Kent — who tackled matters of heart related to the Great War in the better “Testament of Youth” — can’t find a way to showcase the Lubert estate as a visually evocative representation of the characters’ emotional states beyond Sonja Klaus’s (“Taboo”) tasteful old world-meets-modern production design. When you throw in pacing that offers no surprises, the well-appointed cinematography from Franz Lustig (“How I Live Now”) suffers as a result; no shadow-filled indoor scene or weather-driven outdoor shot feels wrong but put together, they don’t add up to a cinematic vision of any meaningful intensity.

The cast is ultimately let down, too, by the lack of directorial verve. Knightley and Skarsgård are a serviceable pair of circle-then-pounce lovers, but their opposites-attracting coupling is hardly cathartic. And in the wake of costume-drama queen Knightley’s revelatory turn shaking up a marriage with wit and spice in last year’s “Colette,” the part of Rachael here is something of a cookie-cutter comedown. Clarke, meanwhile, struggles with a typically thankless role and isn’t done any favors with how his feelings breakthrough is handled in the final act — like the ticking of a box for the remaining emotional strands.

World War II remains such a tempting milieu for filmmakers interested in the classic pleasures of a grandly scaled, era-specific entertainment — whether history-driven (“Dunkirk,” “Darkest Hour”) or spectacle-infused (“Allied,” “Hacksaw Ridge”) — that you wonder if soft entries like “The Aftermath” are merely satisfied to be the B team: atmospheric but not immersive, attractively cast but unmessy, and fine with touching on a moment in time instead of dealing with it. In its aim to primarily push the buttons of romance fans, “The Aftermath” comes off, regrettably, like a period widget.

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The Aftermath review: Strangely superficial in how it deals with its characters’ emotions

The film begins as if it is a modern-day equivalent to the neorealist films that roberto rossellini made at the end of the war, but quickly turns into an escapist romance, article bookmarked.

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Dir: James Kent; Starring: Keira Knightley , Alexander Skarsgård, Jason Clarke . Cert 15, 109 mins

It’s hard to think about romance when you’re living in an occupied city that has just been blown to smithereens. James Kent’s The Aftermath is set in Hamburg just after the Second World War. In case the images of rubble-strewn streets are not enough to convey to audiences the extent of the destruction, the screenplay (by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse) reminds them that more bombs hit Hamburg during a single weekend than had fallen on London during the entire Second World War.

Kent sets the film in the dead of winter, as if it would be unseemly to show sunshine amid such suffering. The German inhabitants bitterly resent the British forces who’ve taken charge of the city. The British suspect that many of the local citizens are probably still unreconstructed Nazis. Hygiene as well as morale is suffering. One of the more telling details is that the Germans have lousy breath. “That’s what 900 calories a day does to you,” a British soldier notes of the miasmatic smell.

• Keira Knightley reveals her one hope for fans watching her new film

Somehow, against this very grim backcloth, true love blossoms. Keira Knightley plays Rachael Morgan, an improbably glamorous British woman who has just arrived in Hamburg to join her husband, Colonel Lewis Morgan (Jason Clarke), one of the senior officers in the British occupying force. They’ve been billeted to live in a beautiful country house owned by German architect Stefan Lubert (Alexander Skarsgård). Lubert still lives here with his teenage daughter, Freda (Flora Thiemann), but is expecting to be turfed out and placed in a camp. The eminently decent Morgan decides to let the Luberts stay on.

It’s at this point an austere and well-observed drama begins to turn into a novelettish, Lady Chatterley -style romance. Rachael bitterly resents Lubert’s presence. She hates the way he skulks around the house, looks at her suggestively as they pass on the stairs or turns up in doorways when she least expects it. Her antagonism towards him masks a very obvious physical attraction. She watches with fascination from a high window as he chops wood in the backyard below.

All the characters here are trying to cope with intense bereavement. They’ve either lost a child or a parent or a spouse. For Lubert and Rachael, once their inevitable affair begins, the sex is cathartic. It helps them overcome their grief and anger. Lubert isn’t exactly a Mellors the gamekeeper type. He is an aristocrat forced by changing circumstances to eke out a living as a metal press operator while also working as a handyman for the Morgans. He is a source of erotic fascination for Rachael in a way that her husband clearly isn’t.

Rachael is the latest in a number of characters played by Knightley who have illicit romances across social or class lines. The role follows on from her Anna Karenina and from her part as the privileged young woman having sex in the library with the housekeeper’s son in Atonement . Knightley brings her usual febrile intensity and sensitivity to the role, but the film itself is strangely superficial in the way it deals with its characters’ emotions. There is little sense that The Aftermath is a Dr Zhivago -like romantic epic. This is too much of a genteel chamber piece for that.

One reason Colonel Morgan and Lubert develop such a rapport, even as one man cuckolds the other, is that they are both from the same social backgrounds. Their two countries may just have been at war but they have more in common than they do with many of their own compatriots. They’re upper middle-class types with perfect manners. Lubert loves art and classical music – another reason Rachael is so drawn to him. When she plays the Steinway piano, he looks on, utterly rapt.

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The pick of the performances here comes from Jason Clarke as the British officer and husband. He is such a decent sort that he never judges anybody. While the rest of the British officers despise the Germans, he is looking for reconciliation. He is a victim of his own good nature. Neither Lubert nor Rachael show any particular guilt about their treatment of him. Clarke plays him as a very British kind of martyr, suffering inwardly, too repressed ever to reveal his real emotions and always ready to forgive anyone who betrays him.

The scenes in the country house could belong to a different film than those in battle-scarred Hamburg itself. It’s as if two different movies have been grafted together: one about Germany “year zero” as the country struggles with the devastation left by the war and one about an affair which enables the lovers to forget their circumstances. Kent (who also directed the Vera Brittain adaptation A Testament of Youth ) struggles to combine the different elements. The Aftermath begins as if it is a modern-day equivalent to the neorealist films that Roberto Rossellini and others made in Europe at the end of the war, but quickly turns into an escapist romance.

The relationship between Lubert and Rachael is depicted in a very ambivalent fashion. On the one hand, it is shown as being reckless and destructive. On the other, it is depicted as a therapeutic way for the two lovers to overcome the trauma of war and rebuild their lives. Their relationship is mirrored by that between Lubert’s teenage daughter Freda and a gimlet-eyed young German terrorist who yearns to kill British officers. This briefly lends urgency to the storytelling. There are consequences for the lovers. Their actions aren’t just threatening marriages, but are putting lives at risk. The Aftermath , though, is a very well-mannered melodrama. Much of the darkness and primal emotion you might expect to find in such a story is strained out. The filmmakers are more interested in showing Knightley in lambent close-ups that make her look like a 1940s movie star than in exploring the misery and contradictions of the period.

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• DVD & Streaming

The Aftermath

• Drama , Romance , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

• March 15, 2019
• Keira Knightley as Rachael Morgan; Jason Clarke as Lewis Morgan; Alexander Skarsgård as Stephen Lubert; Flora Thiemann as Freda Lubert; Kate Phillips as Susan; Martin Compston as Burnham; Jannik Schümann as Albert; Anna Katharina Schimrigk as Heike

Home Release Date

• June 25, 2019

Distributor

• Fox Searchlight

Movie Review

You don’t turn off trauma like you turn off a light. Old wounds leave scars. Losses from long ago can trigger fresh tears. And wars don’t neatly end when an armistice is signed. For some, the battles go on.

It’s the waning weeks of 1945. Hitler’s been dead for months now, and the British army is firmly in control of Hamburg, Germany. World War II, at least in Europe, is over. Still, the digging goes on. Bricks and rubble fill the streets. Skeletal buildings tower and teeter. Germans dig through the dust, slowly recovering what they can¬—a family heirloom here, a family member there. And all the while, they realize that the very dust they sift through could be the ashes of friends, neighbors, family.

Col. Lewis Morgan rules over this ruined city, doing his best to bring a little humanity to this inhuman reclamation. The people are hungry and destitute—grieving over all they’ve lost and angry at how little relief seems on the horizon. A few long for the days when Germany ruled Europe like a Teutonic titan. They brand the numbers “88” on their arms¬—a stand-in for the eighth letter of the alphabet: “HH.” Heil Hitler .

Rachael Morgan, Lewis’ wife, steps into this land of misery and resentment. She feels that finally, after Lewis’ long service, they have a chance to be together—to eat in Hamburg’s finest restaurants (as the people of Hamburg cook what scraps they have in the streets) and throw parties as part of the city’s new, temporary, ruling class. They’ve even been given use of a fine, old house—a mansion that once belonged to an architect.

Rachael and Lewis lost their only son to the war. The Germans took more from her than could be imagined. Still, she hopes that this corner of Germany might offer a new start, a chance for the couple to salve old wounds. To move past the grief they’ve never fully relinquished.

That architect, Stephen Lubert, must also move past his own grief—his wife died in the British bombing raids¬¬—even as he and his teenage daughter, Freda, must move out of their home. After all, it’s not theirs anymore: It’s part of the British spoils of war. They must live in the camps the British have set aside for the Germans as they prepare for a new, very different, life.

But Lewis knows, better than anyone, how bad those camps can be. And gently, he asks his wife whether he can let them stay.

“I’m not comfortable with it,” she says.

“With them ,” Lewis amends. “Uncomfortable with them because they’re Germans.”

Rachael relents: They can stay— if they keep to themselves and live out of sight. The palatial halls aren’t theirs anymore: They can live in the attic.

But some contact can’t be avoided. Sometimes Freda wanders down to her old room. Sometimes Stephen straightens the knickknacks in the home’s great hall. And sometimes, he passes Rachael on the stairway, training his eyes on her for a moment too long.

Rachael notices and wonders: Does he hate them? Hate her? Did he have fond feelings for the Fueher? Could he still? Or is there something else lurking behind that gaze?

Whatever it is, whatever it means, it makes Rachael evermore uncomfortable.

Positive Elements

Let’s start with Lewis—a chap so decent that even Rachael says he might be “stifled under the weight” of that decency. He sincerely wants to help the people of Hamburg get back on their feet. He frets about their lack of food and infrastructure. And he does his best to rein in the worst impulses of his fellow British officers. When Germans riot around his headquarters—and begin rocking the car he’s riding in back and forth, breaking its windows—Lewis keeps shouting for the British soldiers to keep their cool. “No firing!” he says. “No firing!” It’s not the only time he stays either his own or someone else’s hand. Even when he’d be fully justified in pulling a trigger, Lewis opts for cool-headed mercy.

Lewis also loves his wife dearly and fiercely, even if grief and circumstances make it difficult for him to show it. “You were always the best part of me,” he tells Rachael. “You always will be.” Privately, Lewis admits that he’s done things he’s ashamed of. What restrains him now? Often, it’s the thought of what his wife thinks of him.

Rachael loves Lewis, too, though she feels the constant tension of how strained their relationship has become. We see some surprising moments of tenderness from her, especially toward Stephen’s daughter, Freda. Rachael sees in the teen a reflection of the child she lost—a child Rachael still mourns. And at times, it seems that both she and Freda want Rachael to fill the gaping hole left by Freda’s own dead mother.

And that, at its core, is what The Aftermath is about: not love or passion or infidelity (which we’ll get to soon), but grief, and how that grief can twist us. The sins we see here¬—and they are significant—emerge from places of deep pain. And while that doesn’t excuse them, it makes them perhaps more understandable.

Spiritual Elements

We hear a few allusions to Bible verses and phrases, such as, “Suffer the little children.” Part of the film takes place during the Christmas season, and we see Christmas trees and hear snippets of traditional carols.

Sexual Content

When Lewis is called away to handle a violent situation elsewhere, telling Rachael he’ll be gone for a few days or weeks, she implores him to stay.

“I’m asking you, I’m begging you,” she says. “Please don’t go.”

Rachael knows that if he leaves, the temptation living in the attic will be too strong to resist. She and Stephen have already had sex—a hurried, grasping tryst. But when Lewis leaves, the sexual dalliance becomes a full-blown affair.

We see one steamy sex scene. Clothes are removed. Mostly nude bodies are visible, including breast nudity. They have a follow-up interlude in bed in a small cabin that Stephen owns.

They kiss elsewhere, too. In fact, Stephen gets the whole infidelity ball going with an unasked for, and in the moment, unrequited kiss—an “excuse,” he tells her, to force her hand and force himself and Freda out of the house. He also hangs a picture of a nude woman (where Rachael assumes a picture of Hitler used to hang), and Rachael notices other bits of erotic art about the house, too.

Before Rachael’s and Stephen’s affair hits full swing, Rachael tries to rekindle the romance with her husband. She wears a slinky dress, and Lewis pulls her close and speculates how good she’d look out of it. They realize they have an hour before their dinner party guests arrive, and Rachael removes said dress (sitting on the bed in provocative black lingerie) … but Lewis gets a call that pulls him away from any potential lovemaking.

Lewis seems emotionally distant for much of the movie. He leaves their bed before she wakes up. When he sees her weeping in a bath (where we see her bare shoulders), he walks away before she notices he’s there.

[ Spoiler Warning ] This love triangle ultimately requires a decision of Rachael: to stay with her husband or run off with her lover. And when Lewis learns of the affair, he also must decide whether to forgive or not. Both characters ultimately choose the healthier, more honorable option: to stay and to forgive.

Freda has her own passionate attachment: She meets a young man with an “88” tattooed on his arm. The two kiss (and he strips off his shirt at one point), and it’s pretty clear she’d do anything for him—a girlish infatuation that has some pretty serious consequences.

Violent Content

The backdrop of the movie is, of course, World War II, a conflict that killed (we’re told) 40,000 people in Hamburg alone. One man reaches down and picks up a handful of dust and graphically describes the remains of the people who might be in it.

Five months after the end of the war, most of Hamburg’s residents are still digging through the rubble. When two bodies are uncovered—bloody, mummified skeletons embracing—a crass British soldier suggests they wanted one last roll in the hay.

A few people are shot: One man dies instantly from a bullet to the brain, and we see his bloody remains. Another expires as blood courses out his neck and he gasps his last. A person falls through ice on a lake and presumably drowns. A violent riot leads to at least two people being knocked down and injured: One man incurs a bloody gash to his forehead. A German man in British custody gets shoved around an interrogation room and threatened with a gun. Someone brandishes a gun.

We see several characters grieve the loss of loved ones and talk about how they died. The movie’s opening shot depicts a bomb run over Hamburg: It’s night, so all we see are blossoms of fire erupting on the blackened screen.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear one f-word. Also overheard: one use of “b–tard” and about four instances of the British profanity “bloody.” God’s name is misused three times, while Jesus’ name is abused twice.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Lewis smokes, and his cigarette case—which contains pictures of his wife and late son—becomes an important plot device. Other people smoke, too. A variety of drinks are served at restaurants, lounges and dinner parties. Lewis cautions Rachael to keep a certain British officer away from the liquor cabinet: That same officer gets into a confrontation with Stephen, and it’s possible that the clash was precipitated by too much alcohol.

Other Negative Elements

One underlying current in The Aftermath is the inherent friction between Hamburg’s German citizens and its British occupiers. Many Germans naturally resent their unwanted guests, who eat in the best restaurants and commandeer German property even as the city’s residents go hungry.

The British, meanwhile, are perpetually wary of their “hosts.” “They’re not like us,” one says. Some suspect most Germans of being Nazis or Nazi sympathizers—and indeed, the city is home to some who would characterize Hitler’s reign as the country’s best days. That tension shows up both overtly and covertly, with real grievances and unfair prejudice present on both sides.

Freda steals something of value from Lewis and Rachael.

The Aftermath may not be a particularly memorable title, but it is especially fitting. So many people are recovering from titanic, often tragic, losses: a son, a wife, a relationship, a war, a city. Everyone’s picking up pieces here, even if they’re not literally sifting through rubble.

The movie shows us how tragedy twists and bends and sometimes breaks us—and how difficult it can be to move on. Picking up the pieces isn’t easy, especially when those pieces are our own.

But while I valued the film’s underlying message, it communicated that message in troubling ways. In fact, I think the sexual scenes here undercut the film’s real meaning—turning the story into more of a tawdry love triangle, which distracts viewers from its powerful ruminations on loss and grief. The sex and skin we see is graphic and inescapable, which makes this film difficult to recommend and, for many viewers, unwise to see.

Because, as the broken characters in The Aftermath well know, what’s seen cannot be unseen, what’s done cannot be undone.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Film Review: ‘The Aftermath’

'Testament of Youth' director James Kent returns to matters of love and war in his second feature, with well-cast, well-dressed but less emotionally rewarding results.

By Guy Lodge

Film Critic

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Less widely seen (and acclaimed) than it deserved to be, James Kent ‘s debut feature “Testament of Youth” was one of the great recent love-in-wartime dramas, translating the intimate romance and sprawling human tragedy of Vera Brittain’s WWI memoir with a grace and heft worthy of its David Lean allusions. Four years on, it’s not hard to see why Kent was enlisted for “ The Aftermath ,” which aims for a similar old-school blend of stiff-upper-lipped heartbreak and grand classical sweep amid the ruins of another world war — albeit from material a bit thinner than Brittain’s. Paring Rhidian Brook’s 2013 bestseller down to a straightforward love triangle between Keira Knightley and Jason Clarke’s troubled English married couple and the dreamy German widower (Alexander Skarsgård) whose house they’ve requisitioned in postwar Hamburg, Kent’s film settles efficiently but less enthrallingly into rainy-afternoon soap territory.

The result is attractive and diverting, as any well-appointed film starring these actors in mouthwatering period finery could hardly fail to be — though for a story about people rebuilding their lives through grievous personal loss and moral torment, it’s hard not to wonder if its vast reserves of enviable knitwear are counting for more than they should. With Keira Knightley dependably anchoring proceedings in clear, quivery “Atonement” mode — even a bold-hued silk evening gown worn for a key confrontation is plainly designed to prompt memories of  that emerald number — this Fox Searchlight release, shot in early 2017, will please a select audience starved for grown-up comfort viewing when it hits screens on both sides of the Atlantic in March, having somewhat tellingly skipped both the festival circuit and the awards season corridor.

Popular on Variety

A work of fiction nonetheless inspired by a chapter of the author’s family history, Brook’s story was in fact commissioned for the screen by Ridley Scott’s Scott Free imprint in 2011, a year before he received a book deal for the film’s ostensible source novel. It’s easy to see why, beyond the broad appeal of a narrative fat with forbidden love, betrayal and honor: As ubiquitous as WW2 dramas continue to be on screen and in print, ones tackling the eerie, politically fraught historical limbo of its immediate aftermath in Germany remain relatively uncommon.

The factual basis of “The Aftermath,” meanwhile, is a striking story hook that could fuel a long-running, conflict-rich TV series. In the British-controlled region of Hamburg, as numerous Limey officers and their families repossess German houses for the duration of the rebuilding effort, Captain Lewis Morgan (Clarke) proposes a fair but unorthodox compromise when his wife Rachael (Knightley) arrives from England to join him: rather than evicting anguished architect Stefan Lubert (Skarsgård) and his daughter Freda (Flora Li Thiemann) from their own home, the four will share the roomy premises in a literal upstairs-downstairs arrangement. The Luberts are relegated to the attic, of course: Morgan’s liberal-minded compassion, much mocked by his colder-blooded colleague Burnham (Martin Compston), has its limits.

The families have more in common than their lodgings. Stefan and Freda are still numbed by the loss of their wife and mother, respectively, in the Hamburg bombings; the Morgans’ marriage, meanwhile, has been politely on ice since their only son was killed in a blast in Blighty some years before. Shared grief does little to warm the prickly, vehemently Germanophobic Rachael to her new housemates at first. Yet given the frequent absences of her already semi-estranged husband, and with Stefan’s avowedly anti-Nazi credentials soon confirmed, how long can she resist the charms of a sensitive slab of Skarsgård in her immediate vicinity — least of all one with a habit of chopping firewood outdoors in pristine cable-knit rollnecks? It’s only a matter of time before she does what any of us would do, and costume designer Bojana Nikitovic’s glorious ensembles finally hit the floor.

Writers Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse have also pitched in on Brook’s adaptation, and in the process, the human stakes and dynamics of this romantic tangle have been somewhat streamlined. Gone are a number of secondary characters and tensions (including the Morgans’ second, living, son) to allow more room for Knightley and Skarsgård’s gradual, sensual thawing — culminating in a tactile sex scene, shot in white cascades of afternoon light by DP Franz Lustig, that’s pretty luxuriant hot stuff by the standards of this tightly upholstered genre. The upshot of this intensified focus is that the more war-related plotting that remains feels a little arbitrary: What should be a crucial subplot detailing Freda’s seduction and radicalization by a Nazi guerrilla fighter is haltingly developed and shruggingly resolved.

Any heart-quickening peril is otherwise in short supply in a film more comfortable with slow-simmer character interplay than overt genre mechanics. That’s no problem in itself, though the script doesn’t gift Rachael or Stefan with many layers beneath the dignified pain that each wears on their well-creased sleeve; the quiet intelligence integral to both Knightley and Skarsgård’s screen personae is called upon to cover a lot of ground here. As tends to be the case in the chilliest corner of any love triangle, Clarke has the most to work with, and his portrayal of clammed-up trauma masquerading as very-model-of-a-modern-major-general capability yields the film’s most hard-earned scenes of emotional catharsis. (Even in these, Martin Phipps’s extravagantly weeping, stringtastic score offers take-no-chances backup.)

Kent handles his actors with the care and sympathy they deserve: He’s a romantic and a classicist in a manner that has now fallen rather out of fashion, but makes him ideal for war films that largely play out on the battlefield of a beautiful human face. It’s easy to envision the studio-system version of “The Aftermath” that would have had ’em bawling in the aisles in the 1940s, and it’s to Kent’s great credit that his polished, pretty throwback hews close to this hypothetical tearjerker — but that film probably wasn’t a classic either.

Reviewed at Soho Hotel screening room, London, Feb. 18, 2019. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 109 MIN.

• Production: (U.K.-Germany) A Fox Searchlight Pictures, BBC Films presentation of a Scott Free Films, Amusement Park Film production in association with TSG Entertainment. Producers: Jack Arbuthnott, Malte Grunert. Executive producers: Ridley Scott, Joe Oppenheimer, Beth Pattinson, Carlo Dusi.
• Crew: Director: James Kent. Screenplay: Anna Waterhouse, Joe Shrapnel, Rhidian Brook, adapted from the novel by Brook. Camera (color): Franz Lustig. Editor: Beverley Mills. Music: Martin Phipps.
• With: Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgård, Jason Clarke , Martin Compston, Flora Li Thiemann, Kate Phillips, Jannik Schümann, Fionn O'Shea, Anna Schimrigk. (English, German dialogue)

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‘The Aftermath’ Review: A Superficial Look at Love and Loss

James Kent’s drama always misses hard questions and emotional truths in favor of soft-focus melodrama.

It’s almost impressive how The Aftermath studiously avoids being interesting. It features characters going through real hardship in a setting filled with strife, and yet the film never rises above a middling melodrama. The story should delve into interesting questions of guilt and responsibility, and instead it reduces everything to marriage problems and personal rebellion. If the film wasn’t so lovingly shot and earnestly acted, James Kent ’s movie would be kind of gross with how it uses real suffering as a springboard into nothing. What should be a difficult story about love and loss fails to conjure any emotions whatsoever.

Set in Hamburg, Germany five months after the conclusion of World War II, the story follows Rachael Morgan ( Keira Knightley ), who has joined her husband Lewis ( Jason Clarke ), a British officer. The British government has requisitioned the house belonging to Stephen Lubert ( Alexander Skarsgård ) and his daughter Freda ( Flora Thiemann ) for the Morgans to use, but the Morgans have allowed the Luberts to stay in the attic rather than live in the camps. However, tensions in the household are high as Rachael struggles to forgive the Germans for the death of her young son, and Freda holds the British responsible for the death of her mother. However, the distance between Rachael and Lewis leads to an unexpected spark between Rachael and Stephen, who begin an unexpected love affair.

Everything in The Aftermath is woefully underdeveloped. Rachael is cold and distant towards Stephen until some scene where she learns Stephen is an individual who has experienced his own sense of loss and not a Nazi sympathizer, and then she’s ready to fall into his arms. The post-war setting is rarely used beyond Lewis’ work (which is never made totally clear) and Freda’s relationship with a young Nazi sympathizer, and neither one really delves into the chaos of a post-war setting. Post-war Hamburg is just a backdrop, and the cost of the war really never adds up to more than “There were losses on both sides.”

That’s a painfully irresponsible way to look at post-war Germany and what it meant for Germans. There’s a single scene where Stephen’s loyalties are questioned, and it’s really meant to absolve the viewer of any guilt for liking the character. We’re told that Stephen was completely ignorant of the atrocities committed by the Nazis and that he was never a member of the Nazi party. And the film just leaves it there! There’s so much interesting material to dig into for what it means to be a “Good German”, and instead we’re just left to believe that Stephen never wondered why the Leibowitzes stopped coming around for dinner after 1940.

One could argue that the real focus of the story isn’t the aftermath of World War II, but the aftermath of the personal losses Rachael and Stephen have both suffered. But even there, those losses are rendered in broad strokes. Rachael and Lewis had a son named Michael. He liked to play the piano. He has a shirt that Rachael sometimes snuggles. And that’s it. That’s the sum of who their son was, and we learn even less about Stephen’s late wife. These losses are simply there so that Rachael and Stephen have some common ground, and then that common ground will later be used so they have sex. I don’t mind that the characters take solace in each other; I mind that it’s completely unearned because the storytelling is so painfully lazy at every turn.

Instead of using the grief and loss war creates, The Aftermath adds up to nothing more than a torrid love affair. The performances are perfectly fine and it’s a handsomely made picture, but it’s all in service to a painfully underutilized narrative. If these characters are really suffering through the loss created by war, and they’re surrounded by a country where everyone is suffering through a similar grief, then we as an audience should feel it. We should see that war itself isn’t hell, but also what war leaves behind. Instead, for director James Kent, all that remains are bland relationships and longing gazes.

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2149: The Aftermath

2021, Sci-fi, 1h 17m

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2149: the aftermath videos, 2149: the aftermath   photos.

In the year 2149, a young man named Darwin lives, like everyone else; in a small cement module with little more than a computer. He uses it for everything. Verbal communication has died out, but he often instant messages his mother. Darwin is fearful of the outside world, which is widely believed to be contaminated. One night, during a violent storm, lightning hits Darwin's module, which knocks out his computer. He is forced to do the unthinkable and go outside into the vast expanse of landscape. He is surprised to come across a beautiful young woman named Dara, living with her family, in a cottage in the woods. They teach him how to speak and show him the value of actual human contact. He is compelled to journey forth and share the knowledge of his new found life with his mother who is still trapped... however will it be too late for her?

Genre: Sci-fi

Original Language: English

Director: Benjamin Duffield

Producer: Kimberley Berlin , Susan Schneir , Jason Ross Jallet

Writer: Benjamin Duffield , Robert Higden

Release Date (Streaming): May 18, 2021

Runtime: 1h 17m

Production Co: Suki Films

Sound Mix: Stereo

Aspect Ratio: Scope (2.35:1)

Cast & Crew

Nick Krause

Molly Parker

Juliette Gosselin

Daniel DiVenere

Patricia Economo

Young Darwin's Mom

Enrique García

Young Darwin

Colleen Giles

Darwin's Mother

Jordyn Negri

Cassidy Marlene Jaggard

Benjamin Duffield

Screenwriter

Robert Higden

Kimberley Berlin

Susan Schneir

Jason Ross Jallet

Executive Producer

Film Editing

James Gelfand

Original Music

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, waco: the aftermath.

“We don’t want another Waco.” After the harrowing events on April 19, 1993, everyone knew what that statement meant, and the fear behind it. But as harrowing as Waco was, it was more of the beginning of other problems related to the government and private citizen's rights. “Waco: The Aftermath” traces these issues with its many subplots and characters, sometimes in service of showing the nuance needed in this story, and other times just because we love the dramatization of any true crime. This series is a continuation from Showtime's 2018 series “Waco,” using flashback footage to that series’ dramatization of the siege. "Waco: The Aftermath" arrives not only near the 30th anniversary of the events, but as we deal with the own aftermath of January 6, 2021. This is also a story about self-proclaimed patriots and their threat of violence, and is arguably even more pertinent than it was five years ago. We don’t want another insurrection.  

Created by series directors Drew Dowdle and John Erick Dowdle (“No Escape,” “ As Above, So Below ”), “Waco: The Aftermath” wants to provide audiences with more juicy history of all things Waco while being aware that nothing can match the intensity of its previously dramatized siege. And so “Waco: The Aftermath” fires everything at its audience, giving us a drawn-out prequel, a courtroom-drama sequel, and a tedious spin-off all at once, packed with characters and subplots and slow burns. Blink, and you’ll miss an appearance from John Leguizamo as undercover ATF agent Vasquez from the original series. However, he’s still given a guest title card in the show’s moody, flame-filled opening credits (also including Gary Cole , Shea Whigham , and J. Smith-Cameron).  

The biggest chunk of “Waco: The Aftermath” involves a chapter not often talked about, that of the surviving Branch Davidians who were put on trial for conspiracy against the government. From a dramatic standpoint, it’s the potent microcosm this story needs—putting freedoms on trial and putting the term's parameters under a hot spotlight. In its best moments, "Waco: The Aftermath" humanizes the people the media wrote off as simply being in a cult while overlooking their free will to be in Koresh’s community and later defending it. Five of them are put on trial in front of a judge who already seems to have his mind made up, hinting at the sentiment everyone experienced after Waco, especially those in some government-related power.  

But the former followers of leader David Koresh have a tenacious support in the form of lawyer Dan Cogdell played by Giovanni Ribisi , with weary eyes, quick wit, and a gravely voice. In the series’ sporadically exciting courtroom drama, Dan goes up against the prosecuting government to prove that it was the ATF, and not the Branch Davidians who shot first when everything first got violent. The Branch Davidians were just defending themselves from aggressive policing. Nor were they brainwashed, despite the outsider's perspective painting their experience that way. This arc is treated with some cleverness and rewarding little victories for the underdogs—like any courtroom drama, it has surprise developments that spike its more exposition-heavy moments. But these scenes of Cogdell either working with his clients in a side room or standing up for them in a courtroom are sometimes blocked and shot with revealing indifference by the Dowdles, leaving their symbolic freedom fighters stranded in a space without enough dramatic momentum.  

This recounting of the Branch Davidians’ stories also makes for sandy-tinted flashbacks to the 1980s. We are shown the rise of Vernon Howell in the Branch Davidian community and how the man later became known as the Bible-quoting, mullet-topped titan known as David Koresh (played here by Keean Johnson ). Part of that included gaining influence over the group, including former leader Lois Roden (J. Smith-Cameron in a promising role but limited role). These scenes bring out some of the series’ worst characteristics: clunky dialogue and forced emotional beats, with hammy performances having to overcompensate. For all of the time it invests in showing how David created—and stole—his flock, it doesn’t create the desired poignancy. (At one point, the young Koresh says to his followers, “This won’t be the last time we have to defend ourselves!”) Instead, we get half-baked conversion narratives, as people like Livingstone Fagan ( Michael Luwoye ) and Ruth Riddle ( Kali Rocha ) drawn to the self-proclaimed messiah. It all pales compared to seeing Koresh during the 1993 siege, conjured with more force by Taylor Kitsch in the role, and in albeit more intense circumstances. 

Meanwhile, a hostage negotiator who watched Waco implode, Gary Noesner ( Michael Shannon ), lives with great anger and shame about what happened. He answers to that quieting misery by getting back to work, by learning what monster has been created. He finds a disturbing network of white supremacists and the like who were outraged by the siege of Waco and saw it as an attack on their freedoms. This stress from past and present fills Noesner’s life but is given such a bored expression from Shannon, who is usually more assured or intriguing when wrestling with such seismic feelings. With the help of an agent played by a compelling but underused Sasheer Zamata , Gary recruits Carol ( Abbey Lee ), a woman who was romantically connected with one of its violent leaders, to go undercover. Some of the series’ plainer thrills in its dramatization involve Carol, wearing a wire and a newfound sense of trying to help, returning to the community and infiltrating its fortress in the woods, known as Elohim City.  

The series is rarely subtle, especially with a mini subplot about Timothy McVeigh planning what became the Oklahoma City Bombing of April 19, 1995. It’s fitting for the show, but this glorified B-roll is handled awkwardly and blandly from start to finish. It’s hard not to feel like ominous shots of McVeigh (played by Alex Breaux ) and accomplice Terry Nichols (Kieran Mulcare) gathering materials and talking about their work (“People like us were in that building,” McVeigh says, referring to burned own Mt. Carmel) is just giving viewers what they’ve proven to want. We love famous killers, even when the events are only tense if you don’t know what will happen next. (Are people born after 1995 even going to tune into "Waco: The Aftermath"?)  

To its credit, the McVeigh subplot is the only thread that comes off as particularly greedy here. But the series' larger problem is that the execution does not rise to meet the ambition of its story—it asks for a surprising amount of nuance in how it paints angry Americans going up against the government; to see the difference between the peaceful and non-peaceful way of fighting for one's rights. And yet it doesn’t express their stories with nearly the same amount of tact. It all makes the series easy to watch but just as easy to forget. Given the symbolic tragedy of Waco, a forgettable telling feels especially wrong. 

"Waco: The Aftermath" is now streaming on Showtime and will be airing on Showtime each week. 

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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2149: the aftermath, common sense media reviewers.

Slow-paced but thoughtful dystopian sci-fi has peril.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Dystopian sci-fi explores themes of overreliance o

While there are characters who are on the side of

Some peril, as a drone pursues the lead characters

Teen kissing.

The lead character's mother uses a vape, and seems

Parents need to know that 2149: The Aftermath (a.k.a. Confinement ) is a 2021 dystopian sci-fi movie in which a young man living in an isolation pod must venture out into the outside world. The movie is likely to be too slow for younger kids, but for teens and parents, its messages and comments on…

Positive Messages

Dystopian sci-fi explores themes of overreliance on technology, pollution, people living through the internet rather than real life, etc.

Positive Role Models

While there are characters who are on the side of good, no one emerges as a positive role model.

Violence & Scariness

Some peril, as a drone pursues the lead characters, who are hiding from the oppressive technological government that runs the world after environmental collapse. Lead character has a nightmare in which a drone fires electrical charges at him.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The lead character's mother uses a vape, and seems to be addicted.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that 2149: The Aftermath (a.k.a. Confinement ) is a 2021 dystopian sci-fi movie in which a young man living in an isolation pod must venture out into the outside world. The movie is likely to be too slow for younger kids, but for teens and parents, its messages and comments on people who live more through their computers than in real life should inspire thoughtful discussion. There are some moments of peril, including a scene in which the characters must hide from a drone, and a scene in which the lead character has a nightmare in which a drone hits him with electrical shocks. The lead character's mother vapes. Teens kiss. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (3)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Eye Opening

Good teen and pre-teen movie, what's the story.

In 2149: THE AFTERMATH, it's nine years after environmental catastrophe made the outside world uninhabitable for humanity. Darwin lives near what used to be Toronto, and like everyone else, lives alone in a small concrete pod, where he does everything through his computer. He operates a front loader for mining in exchange for food, shelter, and entertainment (in the form of video games). Verbal communication has died out, and Darwin infrequently communicates with his mother. One day while working, he notices on his camera a large dog and a human hiding behind some trees, seemingly without wearing a gas mask for protection. Soon after, an electrical overload disables the circuitry in his pod, and he has no choice but to venture out into the world. He wears a gas mask, but soon makes a startling discovery: The air actually isn't poisoned. He then walks through what used to be suburbs of Toronto, trying his best to avoid the drones that police this outside world and will kill anyone who tries to escape. As he explores deeper into a forest, to his shock, he finds a family, led by Lillian ( Molly Parker ), and teen daughter Dara. This family lives in nature, playing in the woods and swimming in a nearby lake. They teach Darwin how to speak, and soon a budding romance begins between he and Dara. But Darwin wants to find his mother and tell her the good news. Darwin also worries that he'll be attracting the attention of the drones, and doesn't want to get Lillian and her kids into trouble. Darwin goes off to find his mother, but soon makes more shocking discoveries.

Is It Any Good?

This is a thoughtful, if slow-paced, dystopian sci-fi movie. 2149: The Aftermath is a movie that depicts a future in which everyone lives an isolated existence living and working entirely through their computers nine years after environmental catastrophe has rendered the outside world uninhabitable. Or, that's what they've been told, anyway. While those expecting a laser blast, shoot-em-up action-science fiction movie will be disappointed, those looking for something a little more introspective will enjoy the story. In some ways, this is reminiscent of the pre- Star Wars science fiction movies of the 1970s that made pointed comments about ecology and humankind's overreliance on technology and a destructive idea of "progress," where the Eden-like scenes in forests are contrasted with the ruins of once-great cities.

In a way, it's refreshing to have a science fiction movie that isn't entirely dependent on violence to make things interesting. It leads the viewer to understand that the story isn't about escaping police drones and such, but instead about trying to reconnect -- with each other, with the world -- in a way that isn't a mediated spectacle. The acting is good enough --as good as any science fiction movie filled with characters constantly yelling "We've got company!" every time a space battle is about to commence. It's a movie that should provoke discussion among older teens and parents about technology and its use and misuse, and how it has the power to both connect and disconnect people.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about dystopian science fiction movies like 2149: The Aftermath . How is this similar to and different from other such movies?

Often science fiction is used to make comments on contemporary life and society. What messages does this movie seem to be communicating, particularly about computers and the internet?

Can a movie still be engaging even if it doesn't have a lot of action? Why or why not?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : May 18, 2021
• Cast : Nick Krause , Molly Parker , Juliette Gosselin
• Director : Benjamin Duffield
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : ShineHouse
• Genre : Science Fiction
• Run time : 94 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : June 20, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Bleeding Love

Release date

12 th April 2024

Emma Westernberg’s Bleeding Love stars real-life father and daughter duo Ewan McGregor and Clara Mathilde McGregor (who also contributed to the script) as an unnamed father and daughter, on a road trip through New Mexico in the aftermath of the daughter’s near-fatal overdose. The two have been estranged for some time, with the father having left the daughter when she was young due to his struggles with alcoholism, and the long journey ahead of them – both the physical trip and the emotional journey of reconciliation – is fraught and filled with roadblocks.

The awkward parent-child road trip is a premise that’s been done many times, and Bleeding Love doesn’t innovate in that space beyond the hook of casting the McGregors. That said, it executes its beats competently enough that it isn’t unsatisfying, and the leading duo have great chemistry together, elevating the story with their emotive acting.

The writing does its best to present an honest and complex depiction of addiction and family trauma, borrowing from Clara McGregor’s lived experiences, and while there isn’t quite enough space given for those themes to swing with their full weight, there’s enough to keep things engaging and interesting, and the earnestness of the storytelling goes a long way in smoothing over its rougher edges.

Along the way, the pair meet a cast of colourful characters, breaking up their trip with a series of set pieces. These moments are hit-or-miss; when they’re good, they’re great, but when they’re not, they can be a bit of a slog to get through. Still, these vignettes serve their function and liven up the narrative arc that the pair go on across the film’s trajectory and don’t wear out their welcomes.

These encounters also provide an avenue for the cinematography to shine, bringing out a spectrum of emotions in both the characters and the setting, with the road itself being brought to life by strong camera work and lighting. The feature uses a lot of closeup shots, intensifying the feelings of tension and claustrophobia and encouraging the audience to interrogate the subtly shifting social dynamics between father and daughter in a way that adds depth to their core character journey.

Overall, Bleeding Love is fine – it doesn’t feel like it has much ambition beyond that, and one gets the impression it exists largely to facilitate its gimmicky casting, but it also doesn’t do anything grievously wrong. Its straightforward-to-a-fault storytelling might frustrate some audiences, but it’s a largely inoffensive movie, bolstered by strong acting and slick visuals.

Bleeding Love is released in select cinemas on 12 th April 2024.

Watch the trailer for Bleeding Love here:

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Deepwater Horizon True Story: What Happened, What Changed & What Happened Next

• Deepwater Horizon film sheds light on the titular tragic explosion and oil spill, but doesn't fully explore the aftermath.
• Faulty cement work led to an oil well blowout, showcasing how the industry prioritizes speed and profits over safety.
• BP volleyed the blame for the largest environmental disaster in US history back and forth with other corporations, though ultimately paid multi-billion dollar settlements.

Mark Wahlberg's 2016 biographical disaster film, Deepwater Horizon , chronicles the titular event in full detail, but it fails to fully explore the aftermath of the tragic explosion and oil spill. After Wahlberg's real-life Deepwater Horizon survivor Mike Williams is rescued, the movie displays actual footage of Mike's testimony as well as a collage of photos depicting the people who lost their lives in the oil rig explosion. Understandably, the film centers on the survivors. However, in cutting the post-disaster details, Deepwater Horizon leaves viewers who didn't follow the event in real time wondering what happened next.

...[ Deepwater Horizon 's] cement work fails, triggering a massive blowout.

The eponymous Deepwater Horizon was a semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit. Located off the coast of Louisiana, the Transocean-owned rig was meant to drill the Macondo Prospect oil field on behalf of BP. As depicted in the film, James " Mr. Jimmy " Harrell (Kurt Russell), the offshore installation manager, voices concern about BP's insufficient testing of recently completed cement work . Dismissed by BP executives Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) and Robert Kaluza (Brad Leland), Mr. Jimmy isn't necessarily surprised when the cement work fails, triggering a massive blowout and the subsequent Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill.

The Deepwater Horizon Event Became The Largest Environmental Disaster In US History

Deepwater horizon chronicles the worst oil disaster in us history.

In Deepwater Horizon , the faulty and untested cement work fails, leading to an oil well blowout. Essentially, a blowout occurs when crude oil spews at an uncontrollable rate from the underwater well. Thanks to pressure release systems and other fail-safes, blowouts are rarer in the contemporary oil drilling industry, but they can still happen. Unfortunately, the Deepwater Horizon incident is a prime example of a perfect storm of issues all coming together. In addition to the cement work giving out, a series of equipment malfunctions worsened the already untenable situation.

Why Deepwater Horizon Was A Box Office Failure (Despite Good Reviews)

Unable to seal the well, the drill team struggled to evacuate the area. Once the oil in the well ignited, the disaster reached new heights with the Deepwater Horizon rig exploding. A second drill team vessel, the mud-collecting Damon Bankston , was also implicated in the disaster, leading to more injuries among the drill team's members. While the team was able to call for help, the rescue efforts couldn't repair the environmental damage done by the blowout and subsequent oil spill, all of which culminated in Deepwater Horizon becoming the largest environmental disaster in US history.

...an estimated 210 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.

How Long Did The BP Oil Spill Last After The Deepwater Horizon Explosion?

The deepwater horizon blowout lasted for 87 days.

While Deepwater Horizon is based on a true story , and does a great job of shedding light on the lead-up to the disaster, it doesn't cover the fallout in the same way. As the movie's postscript indicates, the Deepwater Horizon blowout lasted for a staggering 87 days following the initial April 20, 2010, incident. The film also notes that an estimated 210 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater Horizon blowout. That said, not only is it the worst oil disaster in US history, but the largest environmental disaster too.

...federal investigators were not interested in wasting any time.

What Discoveries Were Made During The Deepwater Horizon Investigation

Bp reported 8 failures that led to the incident.

Given how many people died in Deepwater Horizon 's disaster , a federal investigation into what happened started mere days after the blowout and explosion. Mike Williams, Transocean's chief electronics technician, gave his testimony immediately after being released from the hospital. Clearly, federal investigators were not interested in wasting any time. Survivors like Williams, and Deepwater Horizon 's real Jimmy Harrell , asserted that the oil drilling industry often prioritizes speed (and financial returns) over safety (via Financial Post ). And that's exactly what happened on April 20, 2010, with regard to the fresh cement job and other known equipment issues going untested and unaddressed.

...BP's [cement integrity] tests could have been completed in under 12 hours.

In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's investigation revealed a harsh — and incredibly frustrating — truth. If BP had listened to Harrell and properly tested the integrity of the cement well, it would have cost the company, which is worth a whopping $107.80 billion, under $130,000. Not to mention, the tests could have been completed in under 12 hours. In an attempt to mitigate things, BP published a report that noted eight contributing equipment failures. In 2011, BP filed $40 billion worth of lawsuits against Transocean and other manufacturers.

BP executives Donald Vidrine and Robert Kaluza were the only individuals to face prosecution.

Was Anyone Criminally Charged After The Deepwater Horizon Disaster?

Donald vidrine & robert kaluza were initially charged with 11 counts of manslaughter.

As revealed by Deepwater Horizon 's ending , BP executives Donald Vidrine and Robert Kaluza were the only individuals to face prosecution for their actions (and inactions). Initially, both men were charged with 11 counts of manslaughter. However, a New Orleans-based judge and federal prosecutors eventually came to a frustrating realization: the chance of a criminal case against the two rig supervisors probably wouldn't succeed. After the charges against Vidrine and Kaluza were dropped in 2015 , the feds went after the larger entities at play — namely BP. Meanwhile, survivors like Williams and Harrell lived with post-traumatic stress.

What Happened To BP Executives Donald Vidrine & Robert Kaluza After The Deepwater Horizon Disaster

What happened to bp after the deepwater horizon explosion & oil spill, bp & transocean volleyed blame back & forth for years.

With all sides looking for scapegoats, lawsuits and blame were volleyed back and forth between BP, Transocean, cementer Halliburton, and blowout-preventer manufacturer Cameron. BP's company line was that a combination of failed safety systems and irresponsible contractors led to the disaster, hence the $40 billion worth of lawsuits. MOEX Offshore, which owned a stake in the oil well, also got involved in the various lawsuits. While some companies settled with BP, the US Department of Justice pursued its investigation into BP's culpability. Eventually, Judge Carl Barbier ruled BP guilty of " gross negligence and willful misconduct " (via New Orleans Sun ).

The court found that the equivalent of 4.2 million barrels of oil were spilled over 87 days.

Under the Clean Water Act, Barbier saddled BP with 67% of the blame ; Transocean and Halliburton would bear 30% and 3% of the blame, respectively. The fines involved corresponded to each party's degree of negligence and percentage of blame, though the number of barrels of oil spilled also factored into costs. In 2015, BP finally reached a settlement with not only the US government but several states and 400 local authorities; the price-tag of said settlement amounted to a staggering $18.7 billion (via The Guardian ), though clean-up costs and penalties for Deepwater Horizon totaled roughly $54 billion.

As of April 2024, Deepwater Horizon is streaming on Max.

Deepwater Horizon

Deepwater Horizon is a 2016 disaster film based on the BP oil spill. Directed by Peter Berg and based on a story by Matthew Sand, the film chronicles a mishandling of an oceanic drilling job that leads to a massive explosion and mass amounts of oil leaking into the ocean depths.

Director Peter Berg

Release Date September 29, 2016

Studio(s) Lionsgate

Distributor(s) Summit Entertainment, Lionsgate

Writers Matthew Sand, J.C. Chandor, Matthew Michael Carnahan

Cast J.D. Evermore, Mark Wahlberg, Kate Hudson, John Malkovich, Kurt Russell, Brad Leland, Gina Rodriguez, Ethan Suplee

Rating PG-13

Runtime 107minutes

Genres Drama, Action, Documentary

Budget $156million

Sources: Financial Post , New Orleans Sun , The Guardian

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Before Dawn review – Anzac drama needed a bigger budget or a better script

A central performance from Levi Miller isn’t enough to lift a run-of-the-mill war film that struggles to maintain dramatic interest

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W atching Before Dawn, it is quickly obvious that this first world war drama didn’t have a budget big enough to stage blockbuster scale battlefield recreations – instead, there’s plenty of scenes following characters inside trenches, the camera poised below ground level. Director Jordan Prince-Wright exploits the restricted spatiality of these settings, often keeping shots tight and human-oriented, with scant locational details. The cover of night also helps. It reportedly cost $900,000 in earthworks to dig the trenches, transforming farmland in Esperance, Western Australia, into environments that can plausibly – at a push – resemble terrain in war-torn Europe.

The marketing materials for Before Dawn do a good job impersonating a bells-and-whistles production but the film itself is another matter: there were times, particularly early on, when I couldn’t help but think, “These are just actors performing in a hole in the ground.” You can feel Prince-Wright and his cast and crew bending over backwards to achieve things better resourced productions pull off much more easily, giving the experience a slight tang of desperation, and perhaps diverting attention from areas where it needed work – such as the script, which brings nothing really new to the table and lacks a compelling arc.

The film follows Levi Miller’s Jim Collins, a virtuous young man who leaves the family sheep station to serve in the war, deployed with fellow Anzacs to the western front. Before Dawn begins with battlefield imagery – rats skulking around, soldiers navigating muddy trenches – before jumping back to Jim at home. The film feels quite unsettled in its establishing minutes, before stabilising into an experience that deploys the sorts of scenes and messages we’ve seen many times before, often in far superior productions. Soldiers push through perilous terrain, share moments of bonding, encounter death and horrible hardship, deliver melancholic reflections accompanied by an orchestral score, et cetera.

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Miller is a bankable actor (he is particularly impressive in the 2021 swimming drama Streamline ) but his performance here, like the film itself, lacks gravitas. He isn’t enough to lift a run-of-the-mill production that struggles to maintain dramatic interest. It is reasonably successful in some aspects, though – for instance, in its portrayal of camaraderie between very young men in tragic circumstances.

The producers have declined to say how much the film cost to make, but it doesn’t look like a lot. Budgets are never an indication of quality – in fact, big ones come with all sorts of consequences, alluded to in Orson Welles’ great quote: “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” But money and resources can be particularly important in genres such as science fiction, period dramas and war films, especially if they’re based in environments with particular visual expectations and reference points.

To really pull off a film like Before Dawn, and keep us engrossed during long slabs of minimal action, the dialogue and performances needed to be top-notch. A fresh perspective is also important in a genre that’s been so comprehensively explored. This speaks to the greatness of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest : a genuinely unique film that observes war through a different prism.

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Before Dawn might have also benefited from contemplating what exactly the Anzacs were fighting for. An interesting response to this question can be found in Charles Chauvel’s 1940 film Forty Thousand Horsemen, when Chips Rafferty’s character, a member of the Australian Light Horse, answers: “I suppose it’s for the right to stand up on a soapbox in the Domain. The right to tell the boss what he can do with his job if we don’t like it. And the right to start off as a roustabout and finish up as prime minister.” Chauvel steps out of the trenches, so to speak, to engage in broader social discussions – something that is so rare in war films, including this one.

Before Dawn is in Australian cinemas now

• Australian film

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