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Review of After Everything (George Kallis)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if George Kallis' softer, lyrical inclinations have always attracted your interest, the maturation of his romantic material for this franchise offering a redemptive culmination.

Avoid it... if your interest in the After films' music was based upon the more contemporary and dreamy atmospheres of the prior scores, this entry adopting a more organic and classical tone.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

After Everything: (George Kallis) The After film franchise has never been destined to achieve the status of high art, but its five entries from 2019 to 2023 secured an immensely faithful following. Essentially one long story of a tumultuous love affair between an attractive young duo, the concept explores endlessly familiar staples in romantic dramas. By the culmination of the five films in 2023's After Everything, the leads, Tessa and Hardin, finally realize that the two of them are the inevitable couple that audiences realized long ago, but not before the young man is forced to reconcile with the demons of his past. The successful author seeks forgiveness from an old flame, Nathalie, in Portugal, and the peace between the two of them allows Hardin to finally approach and propose to Tessa, making young women around the world weep with joy. The financial grosses of the five films declined with each entry in a mirror reflection of worsening critical reception, but After enthusiasm persisted in its fan base. The music for the films remained consistent in style and tone during the first four entries, contemporary light drama and suspense atmospheres provided by Justin Caine Burnett for After (2019) and After We Collided (2020) while George Kallis continued a similar sound with different themes in After We Fell (2021) and After Ever Happy (2022). Perhaps in part due to the countless song placements utilized in these films, the scores struggled to enunciate a central identity throughout the first four entries. Both Burnett and Kallis developed core themes, especially as representing the Tessa and Hardin relationship, though these ideas never seemed to take flight. Anonymous washes of keyboarding, strings, electric bass, and synths tended to exude a wet, dreamlike fog for a fair portion of these scores, with poignant thematic moments only occasional. That equation is significantly upended by Kallis for After Everything, a marked refocusing and general improvement on the presence of the franchise's score material.

Over the course of his career, Kallis has shown a knack for conjuring lyrical appeal in his film scores, obscure works like Lev Yashin, the Dream Goalkeeper conveying remarkable melodic grace without the need for sizable performance ensembles. Melancholy piano performances in particular are a specialty. These tendencies culminate in the maturation of the composer's After-related material in After Everything, a more optimistic and generally positive work than his prior two. Cues like "You Taped It" and "Cliff Diving" return to the earlier scores' electronic darkness and turmoil as Hardin continues to struggle with his past, but these moments are relatively brief. Instead, the whole mix of Kallis' music is brightened for a far more crisp and organic sound from the strings and piano in this work. The 40-piece string group is augmented primarily by that piano, but Kallis also applies guitars (both acoustic and electric) to a better end here as well. Solo string accents are embellished at times, too. These elements are afforded a more classically inclined tone of clarity rather than the dreamy, slightly electronic haze that guided the same instruments before. That said, the composer's slight, barely noticeable use of synth vocal effects in a few places could have been more prominent to maintain the quasi-fantasy aspect of this particular romance. Still, the personality of After Everything is, despite its diversions into source-related pop infusions, so sincerely heartfelt and even ebullient at times that it elevates the narrative immensely for this closure to the story. Part of this success owes to Kallis' much better development of his themes, taking a few recurring ideas from his prior scores and expanding upon them to revelatory new ends. Fresh melodic material is also introduced, some of it dedicated to single scenes, and this accessible technique extends the same impressively heartfelt and extroverted emotional appeal. The earlier scores in the franchise, while more than adequate for their task, never tended to maintain a coherent narrative by themselves, but Kallis's approach to After Everything is remarkably different.

The heart and soul of the franchise's theme is the one representing Tessa and Hardin that has slowly emerged over the prior two scores and thrives here. This love theme was initially vaguely similar to ascending figures from Burnett's main theme for the start of the franchise. In Kallis' After We Fell, this idea emerged in "We Are All Fools in Love" on dreamy keyboarding, a piano joined by cello in "Pain" before the idea shifts to a hopeful string fragment in "Random Homeless Man" and becomes faint in "Tell Me What." By After Ever Happy, the theme reprised its wet keyboarded mode in "Love is Love" and, to a lesser degree, "So Proud" and "The Rain." In After Everything, a more traditional presentation of piano expresses this theme more than anything else, though it is explored in full on nicely layered strings in "Love is Patient" before dissolving into more somber piano and solo cello-driven contemplation by the end. The love theme fights against dissonance early in "Flashback at the Club," reprises the previous score's more ambient demeanor in "Visiting Natalie," and disintegrates during "We're Over" while defiantly surviving late in "You Taped It." In the critical "Remembering Tessa," the theme meanders on piano before a lovely ensemble performance of the descending secondary phrase at 1:02, a cello then exploring that phrase further. This B phrase of the theme is where Kallis truly earns his money in this score, this portion occupying many of the most prominent moments of romance in the work. The remainder of "Remembering Tessa" slowly builds momentum again with the theme on piano, a subtle driver of Hardin's persistence of yearning. The theme's primary phrasing then gains courage throughout "That is Success" before restraining itself tentatively in the second half of "Without Your Consent" and during moments of hope to "Natalie's House." It very carefully navigates "Go and Talk to Her" on piano with subtle electronic choral backing, adopts the wet, synth-like atmosphere from before in "Hardin's Best Man Speech," and is finally more clearly carried by piano before a rousing ensemble rendition in "The Proposal," the overflowing romance of the descending secondary phrasing serving as the payoff for the entire franchise's music.

Another returning motif in After Everything is one of vulnerability that doubles for adversity, a rising cello figure against other strings that prominently gained fandom after its use in "It's Not OK" from After We Fell. This tool can be used for different characters as necessary, and here it shifts to Hardin. The solo cello resumes the identity in "It Was Our Story," adding full strings for depth. More interestingly, however, Kallis smartly translates the motif into a faster, sunnier version for better days early in "Beautiful Memories." The secondary phrase of the love theme interjects at 1:35 with subtle acoustic guitar accent before strings provide a more recognizable version of the vulnerability theme to close the cue. For the character of Nathalie, the composer offers a very pretty new theme with quietly propulsive energy. Shades of its structure inform "Visiting Natalie" without a direct reference despite some nice guitar work in the cue, but the theme itself evokes the dreamy atmosphere of previous scores in "Without Your Consent" and at the outset of "Natalie's House." Kallis opts to explore a host of other singular dramatic ideas in the score, starting with a touchingly dramatic posture with acoustic guitar in "Visiting Natalie" and "I'm Trying." Compelling string layers for a lovely pensive moment in "Christian's Advice" are joined by an offshoot of the love theme for the highly redeeming "I Love You Son" with female vocal effect. A cheery and buoyant idea flows out of ambient haze in "A Lot of Bravery," and the wedding scene aligns the formality of a "Nora and Landon's Wedding" motif with on-screen violin performances. On the opposite side of the score are the location-related diversions of contemporary coolness, lively strings, guitar, and drums bursting in "Portuguese Coast" while less attractive synthetic light rock manipulation of keyboard, electric bass, and strings prevails in "Sailing." An awkward remix at the end of the album is best avoided; it almost sounds like rear channel sound effects intrude. That 47-minute album released by Kallis himself includes a suite arrangement, "After Everything," which opens with the upbeat version of the vulnerability theme in "Beautiful Memories," combines the large string portion of "Love is Patient" with the culmination in "The Proposal," and finishes with the highlight of "Remembering Tessa" and a neatly edited conclusion. Altogether, After Everything is an impressively lovely and thoughtful maturation of Kallis' music for this franchise, and it makes for an effortlessly relaxing listening experience.  ****

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 47:25

• 1. After Everything (5:37) • 2. Love is Patient (2:28) • 3. It Was Our Story (1:23) • 4. Flashback at the Club (1:26) • 5. Visiting Natalie (1:53) • 6. I Really Like You (1:24) • 7. We're Over (1:16) • 8. I'm Trying (0:45) • 9. You Taped It (2:36) • 10. Portuguese Coast (0:33) • 11. Cliff Diving (1:54) • 12. Remembering Tessa (4:14) • 13. Christian's Advice (2:15)

• 14. That is Success (1:55) • 15. Sailing (0:34) • 16. Without Your Consent (1:35) • 17. I Love You Son (1:29) • 18. A Lot of Bravery (1:00) • 19. Beautiful Memories (3:03) • 20. Natalie's House (1:02) • 21. Go and Talk to Her (1:08) • 22. Nora and Landon's Wedding (1:18) • 23. Hardin's Best Man Speech (1:10) • 24. The Proposal (1:17) • 25. After Everything Remix* (4:10)

NOTES & QUOTES:

There exists no official packaging for this album.

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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from After Everything are Copyright © 2023, Cinematic Soundscapes and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 2/13/24 (and not updated significantly since).