(From IMDb.com)

So much healing had to be done after the powers that be decided who had won and who had lost World War II.

On both sides.

We’re reminded of the deep scars again by The Aftermath, a drama directed by James Kent that’s set in tense postwar Hamburg. The Brits are everywhere among the residents in this tale adapted from Rhidian Brook’s 2013 bestselling novel. The screenplay by Brook, Anna Waterhouse and Joe Shrapnel focuses on the soldier and his wife played by Keira Knightley and Jason Clarke and the widowed German portrayed by Alexander Skarsgard.

The practice there and then was for the Brits to requisition the homes of the locals. Nice word, that, for taking over somebody’s house.

This soldier and wife, though, decide it more humanitarian to send the father and his just-turned-teen up to the attic quarters instead, a shared arrangement they deem generous.

Which track is the best? (From IMDb.com)

Everybody’s got luggage aplenty to fill all the rooms.

The house owners are grieving the loss of wife and mother to the war.

The soldier and wife, too, lost a loved one back when the bombs were falling in London, and never quite got over that.

This is a tale of loss of love and faith, the discovery of spirit and strange stirrings, and the depths of the dilemmas that go along with all of the above.

They all make you feel the pain.