Blitz review: Steve McQueen’s World War II film tours through London during the bombings
In the nine months between September 1940 to May 1941, the Germans dropped 12,000 metric tons of bombs on London.
Buckingham Palace was bombed, the Tower of London was bombed and the Houses of Parliament were bombed. But it wasn’t just the landmarks and the institutions, it was also people’s homes, especially in the East End.
Today, if you walk through parts of the city, there are still rows of near-identical Victorian and Georgian terraces. But there are also gaps, where a mid-century house has popped up, a reminder of a home that once stood and was destroyed by an explosive dropped by the Luftwaffe.
Sign up to The Nightly's newsletters.
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.
By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.An estimated 30,000 people were killed during the action known as The Blitz. For Londoners, especially on those first 57 consecutive nights when blaring sirens screamed through the city, shredding nerves, a sign of the death that followed, the home front became the war front.
British filmmaker Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, Shame) wanted to capture the chaos, fear, resilience and humanity of those dark nights but he chose the unusual perspective of a child through which to tell that story.
George (Elliott Heffernan) lives in Stepney with his mum Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller). A biracial boy, he is targeted by other kids and judged by adults.
The Blitz has already been raining down on London when Rita finally gives in and agrees to evacuate George to the countryside, where hundreds of thousands of children were sent to escape the worst of the attacks on Britain.
George disagrees and he jumps out of the train out of London and tries to make his way back home.
Most of the film follows George as he encounters different people and scenarios during his two nights around the city.
There are the brothers he meets when he hitches a ride back on a freight train into town, the gang of East End hustlers and thieves (including Stephen Graham, who, of course, is the actor you call on to play an East End gangster), and a volunteer warden, Ife (Benjamin Clementine), originally from Nigeria who inspires George to accept his own heritage.
George also chances upon the Café de Paris in the aftermath of its bombing, which killed at least 34 people including the band leader, and spends a night in a tube station doubling as an unofficial air-raid shelter.
At the same time, McQueen takes the audience into the spaces of Rita’s life – the munitions factory where she works, which is visited by the BBC for a live broadcast, the local pub and the air-raid shelters which houses those made homeless and, sometimes, orphaned, by the bombing.
McQueen’s intention is clear. He takes audiences on a tour through these moments during The Blitz, stepping through segments of people’s lives at an extraordinary time and using George and Rita as a Virgil-esque guide.
There are scenes of danger and grief, but also moments of reprieve and inspiration. The speech by shelter marshal Mickey Davies (Leigh Gill) or Ife whose kindness to George comes at exactly the right time. When we’re with George, there’s almost an Alice in Wonderland quality to it.
McQueen is also cognisant and features actors from non-white backgrounds to emphasise that while diverse people have often been marginalised in the stories told about the past, they were always there.
When it comes to the craft of Blitz, from the meticulous production design, the performances, particularly from Ronan and Weller, and Hans Zimmer’s score, it’s undeniably a technically wonderful film. It is, also, quite emotional at times.
But there is something that bumps, and it’s that Blitz didn’t nail the balance between staying with George and moving off his story to follow someone else for a while and finding him again.
You were left questioning whether you wanted more or less of George, rather than being satisfied with the mix you got.
Still, Blitz is a well-made film that tells smaller slices of a larger story that hasn’t always had the focus it should. If nothing else, you’ll learn a lot.
Rating: 3/5
