Product: After the War [VHS]
Rating: 5.0
Post-War Britain As Experienced By Two Young Men
After the War is yet another in the long line of excellent dramas produced for broadcast within the United Kingdom: the western world's great contributor of quality television. With locations on three continents and with a plethora of talented British actors in its cast, this far reaching piece lingers in one's thoughts long after first viewing.This is the story of the lives of two British Jewish families "after the war" meaning the Second World War, a time these families once joined their fellow citizens in hailing as a coming paradise, only in their case, due to their ethnicity, one that might also bring them prosperity, common respect, and inclusion into greater British society. After the War tells how Michael Jordan and Joe Hirsch, the sons of each family, achieve all this, or perhaps fail to. While by the 1940's the modestly affluent Jordan family is all but assimilated into British culture, Joe Hirsch and his mother, as recent immigrants from Nazi dominated Europe, represent another sphere altogether. While each boy might correctly be labeled ambitious, Joe's drive comes from a different source than his schoolmate and friend Michael's.Michael matures and finds success as a writer in the film industry; the obsessively motivated Joe rises above all expectations as a media power broker. One man is a playboy, the other more grounded, neither could be called "at peace" with himself. Each man attempts to separate his present from his past and each pays some personal price for trying. While friends, these two one-time schoolmates are also rivals in several competitive arenas, but nowhere else is their rivalry more ardently expressed than in their competition for a woman they both come to desire. The decades pass and the endpoint of the film is reached a generation after the war's end, and at that time one questions whether either Joe or Michael ultimately got the things he wanted in life, and if so, whether all the dreams of glory "after the war" were fulfilled.One thing to watch for here is the show stealing "confession" scene with Mrs. Jordan which comes along at the film's end and raises her from the minor figure she'd been until then to someone suddenly of importance and depth. Such a rare happening in any novel, play, or motion picture, and one of the many surprises here.I was overjoyed to find this production on DVD, having first acquired it off VHS from where my father had taped it off of a Masterpiece Theater broadcast in the 1980's. (Er, you want your old tapes back now, Dad?) I'd say the film has aged well and lost little in the transfer process, and would direct anyone who appreciates a quality tale to take a look.