Film review: Steve McQueen’s World War II drama ‘The Blitz’ is more unconventional than it seems

The Blitz, set in London during World War II, may technically be Steve McQueen’s first war film. But struggle and survival have long been a hallmark of the director’s hard and painful work.

Regardless of the circumstances—slavery in 12 Years a Slave, 1960s-1980s London of West Indian immigrants in Small Axe, the Irish famine in Shame—McQueen was drawn to historical moments less for their dramatic events. extremes than how they test the morals of those in and around the battle. Did they close their eyes? Did they risk themselves? Do we remember?

McQueen’s films tend to ask questions, often uncomfortable ones. This is also true in his popular science works. His 2023 short film Grenfell captured the aftermath of the tragic Grenfell Tower fire. Last year’s issue of The Occupied City compared modern Amsterdam street addresses with what happened in those very places during the Nazi occupation of World War II.

In the film, McQueen juxtaposed past and present, death and life, and some of the same collisions can be found in 1940’s The Blitz, which opens Friday in theaters and streams November 22 on Apple TV+. It is told largely from the point of view of a 9-year-old boy, George (Elliot Heffernan), whose single mother, Rita (a tough Saoirse Ronan), has made the agonizing decision to send him to the countryside along with thousands of other schoolchildren fleeing for their lives. Blitz.

A year into the war, the bombing has already become intense, as has the questionable nature of how some are responding to the ever-present danger and weakening order. The film opens with a blaze of fire as firefighters battle an out-of-control hose and masses of people rush underground to escape the bombers overhead. The gates outside the station are locked, and the police stationed nearby refuse to open them. This is an early hint that McQueen’s take on the war will be more complex and gritty than the usual World War II drama.

The Blitz really begins as soon as Rita leaves George at the station. The parting is bittersweet (“I hate you,” George says on stage) only because their connection is so strong. Soon after being on the train, George sees an opportunity to escape and jumps off. The Blitz continues as George’s odyssey to try to return home.

It’s an awkwardly compressed story—the film takes place over the course of one day, but feels like a lifetime—that is clumsily torn between George and Rita. “Blitz” feels caught between a conventional war drama and something more adventurous and probing. It’s not as cohesive as McQueen’s best work, but the tensions that drive The Blitz make it a unique and sporadically exhilarating experience.

A characteristic episode occurs at the beginning of the film. George, black and probably feeling growing anxiety as he leaves London, climbs onto a passing train and discovers that three young brothers are also there. After a tense moment, they find camaraderie together. Sitting on the roof of the train, they seem almost carefree. But moments later, as they flee from authorities at a train station, one of the boys is instantly killed by a moving train.

Throughout, The Blitz switches between moments of tenderness and violence, a back-and-forth movement that McQueen believes is not simply part of wartime. After the moment at the train station, the film fades into flashbacks to Rita and George’s never-before-seen Grenadian immigrant father, Marcus (C.J. Beckford). On his way home from a fun night of dancing at a jazz club, a man deliberately runs into Marcus. During the ensuing fight, Marcus is arrested and then quickly deported. In an instant, cruelty and racism can destroy a life as surely as a Nazi bomb from above.

The film stays close to George as he approaches the house in Stepney Green in the East End. The Blitz is far less concerned with the aerial bombardment above than with the festering prejudices and injustices on the ground. In the film’s most Dickensian sequence, George is captured by a Fagin-like outlaw (Stephen Graham), whose gang of thieves is stealing the dead and looting newly bombed apartments. There are frighteningly ghostly scenes, especially in the Café de Paris. One moment it’s a tight-knit, multiracial jazz club, the next – as captured in one sweeping, grotesque shot by Yorick Le Saux – it’s a bloody ruin.

There are moments of uplift or at least temporary relief. One of them occurs when Rita, who works in a munitions factory wearing a Rosie the Riveter scarf, sings for a BBC radio program from the factory floor. Once Rita learns that George is lost, an inappropriate subplot emerges: her feud with an unsympathetic boss, arguments with those in charge of the evacuation, and her attempt to find George with the help of a policeman (Harris Dickinson, in a role too vague to resonate) .

However, time and time again we see that it takes the conviction and courage of individuals to resist the tide of indifference. Among them is activist Mikey Davis (Lee Gill), who gives a moving speech at the shelter. And, most notably, it includes Nigerian ARP overseer Ife (Benjamin Clementine), whom George meets outside a store advertising coffee and sugar from Africa with caricatures of blackface. Clementine, a talented singer and songwriter, has a radiant presence that warms the extremely unsentimental film. Ife gives George pride and confidence as a young black man. For his part, young Heffernan shows no stress while filming his first film.

Ultimately, the fact that The Blitz is at war may not be its defining feature. The besieged London in McQueen’s film is exposed to the same risk of injustice as the German planes. For George, Rita and the rest of the resisters, resistance is not just about surviving the war. It’s a way of life.

“Blitz,” an Apple Studios release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for thematic elements including some racism, violence, strong language, brief sexuality and smoking. Duration: 120 minutes. Three stars out of four.