The Here After | Little White Lies

The Here After

11 Mar 2016 / Released: 11 Mar 2016

Two young men, one with short blond hair, standing in a forested area, wearing dark clothing.
Two young men, one with short blond hair, standing in a forested area, wearing dark clothing.
3

Anticipation.

This low-key Swedish drama picked up plenty of plaudits on the European festival circuit.

4

Enjoyment.

An accomplished, atmospheric debut feature.

3

In Retrospect.

Excited to see what both director and star do next.

A stun­ning small­town dra­ma about griev­ing and for­give­ness from first-time Swedish writer/​director Mag­nus von Horn.

At a time when com­pelling true-crime dra­mas like Spot­light, TV’s Mak­ing a Mur­der­er and NPR’s Ser­i­al pod­cast are keep­ing water cool­ers every­where well-stocked, it feels odd to sud­den­ly put your­self in the shoes of some­one who is unequiv­o­cal­ly guilty of com­mit­ting a ter­ri­ble act.

That’s the set-up for Swedish writer/​director Mag­nus von Horn’s impres­sive debut fea­ture, The Here After, which cen­tres around a young offender’s rein­te­gra­tion into a close-knit rur­al com­mu­ni­ty that’s not yet ready to for­give and for­get. Which is under­stand­able, giv­en the gris­ly nature of the trag­ic event in question.

When we first meet John (Ulrik Munther) he doesn’t seem the wrong­ful type. He’s placid and qui­et, but not in the way an unsus­pect­ing neigh­bour might pre­sup­pose when speak­ing to a local TV news crew. Could it be that this is what made him so dan­ger­ous in the first place? Is there real­ly a mon­ster lurk­ing behind the unas­sum­ing blond-haired, blue-eyed exterior?

Not exact­ly. As a direc­tor, von Horn is smart enough to recog­nise that even the most heinous crimes have a human cul­prit, and as such his sen­si­tive, unsen­sa­tion­al film retains a sense of poise and nev­er strays into soap opera ter­ri­to­ry. Nor is the film guilty of trashy tabloid hec­tor­ing, which wasn’t the case with Thomas Vinterberg’s crude­ly manip­u­la­tive 2011 dra­ma, The Hunt, to which The Here After bears only a super­fi­cial likeness.

If there’s a down­side to von Horn’s approach, it’s that fram­ing the sto­ry from the perpetrator’s point of view rel­e­gates the real vic­tim to the side­lines. Which is not to say that her pres­ence isn’t felt – the entire town is cast in a cold, eerie shad­ow, its res­i­dents haunt­ed by the twin spec­tres of anger and fear so elo­quent­ly char­ac­terised by the stark cin­e­matog­ra­phy of Lukasz Zal (who pre­vi­ous­ly lensed Pawel Pawlikowski’s Oscar-win­ning, mono­chrome mas­ter­piece from 2013, Ida). Like­wise, it’s made clear from the very start that John, despite being out of prison, will nev­er be released from the feel­ing of remorse that con­stant­ly hangs over him.

And while John just wants to move on with his life, his peers are quick to remind him of the one he destroyed. Ini­tial­ly John receives only mild taunts upon return­ing to his for­mer school, but his increas­ing­ly con­fused and frus­trat­ed class­mates soon con­spire to car­ry out a more hos­tile form of ret­ri­bu­tion. Cru­cial­ly, John nev­er retal­i­ates, accept­ing his ostraci­sa­tion before even­tu­al­ly find­ing solace in new girl Malin (Loa Ek), who helps to shade in John’s back­sto­ry by ask­ing the ques­tions no one else dare.

Though punc­tu­at­ed by moments of taut con­flict, the restraint of von Horn’s direc­tion cre­ates a last­ing dra­mat­ic ten­sion that is epit­o­mised by 21- year-old pop star-turned-actor Ulrik Munther (think Sweden’s answer to Ed Sheer­an), who deserves huge cred­it for his under­stat­ed cen­tral turn. This is a film that pos­es both dif­fi­cult and vital ques­tions about how com­pas­sion and tol­er­ance are exer­cised on a soci­etal lev­el, with­out ever ask­ing us to pass moral judge­ment on any of its characters.

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