Blitz of Hope
“Hopeful” isn’t necessarily a word to describe the work of Steve McQueen, the acclaimed British visual artist turned filmmaker who’s now best known for directing 12 Years a Slave. Since his debut Hunger, a fact-based drama about the Ireland prison hunger strike, McQueen’s captured the magnitude of human suffering. His latest film Blitz is no less personal than any of his previous work, but allows for some optimism because it's told from the perspective of a child.
Set during the German bombing of the United Kingdom during the early stages of World War II, Blitz centers on the young, mixed-race boy George, played in a breakthrough performance by Elliott Heffernan. Like many of the nation’s children, George is sent to find safety away from London, which means separation from his mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan). Blitz is about the breaking and reconstruction of London pride, but it’s filtered through the eyes of a young boy who’s just beginning to develop his civic identity. The best parts of Blitz aren’t George recognizing the devastation’s scale, but learning to appreciate what’s worth fighting for.
The notion of a World War II tale told through a child’s eyes isn’t original, as mawkish dramedies like Jojo Rabbit and Life is Beautiful have received praise and criticism for “sanding down” the era for the sake of telling a coming-of-age story. Blitz is the first PG-13 film from McQueen, but it’s not devoid of darker ideas; George faces racism from within his nation’s borders, and questions whether London has ever been a city that loves him as much as he adores it. Yet, McQueen also leaves room for faith that the future could be better off. One key scene of George bonding with other confused children on a train feels like it could’ve been lifted from Dickens.
Identity and perspective are critical to McQueen’s work, as he’s aimed to explore critical moments in the 20th century through the perspective of oppressed people whose views have generally been left out of written history. 12 Years a Slave examined the practice of a freed man forced into servitude, Mangrove examined the birth of anti-brutality movements, and even Widows was ostensibly a genre thriller following the female players that would’ve generally been kept silent. Blitz is definitively about race, but it’s also a story of class oppression; characters like Rita don’t just lose their lives in the course of the bombing, but their entire livelihoods.
The segments examining the burgeoning conflict between factory workers and inept military protectors is where the film is at its weakest, despite some beautiful moments of longing from Ronan in one her most mature roles. It’s compelling to examine the role that class mobility played during the war, but Blitz is much stronger when it’s more formless. McQueen has rarely tapped into the existential side of his visual art within his films, with the exception of 2020’s Lover’s Rock. Blitz is strong when George is simply wandering on his own through the remains of what he has always known to be a great civilization; critically, McQueen cuts the story short before he ever gives any hints at what the restoration process could look like.
Melodrama doesn’t envelop Blitz, but it’s more forthright in its emotions than McQueen’s previous projects. Much of this is due to Heffernan, as he’s asked to be far more ambiguous than most child actors. George is a character who’s taught to be silent because of the infrastructural racism that shackles him, and any more evident reactions on his part are effective. McQueen’s too smart of a director to boil the story down to “Why can’t we all get along?” That said, it's the moments of casual kindness peppered through the destruction (including a particularly powerful moment involving Paul Weller as Rita’s father) that are most affecting.
Blitz is a film about youth that’s aimed at an older audience; it’s not inappropriate for the crowd of kids that could handle Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse or the Pixar films, but it may be more engaging for those that can contextualize George’s experiences through the stage of emotional development that he’s in. It’s also has gorgeous technical masterwork, with stunning cinematography from the regular Luca Guadagnino collaborator Yorick Le Saux, as well as Hans Zimmer’s score. The visceral sensibilities of Blitz are so strong that it’s a disservice a majority of viewers will end up watching it on Apple TV+. Streaming films receive less cultural awareness than their theatrical contemporaries, but a film as nuanced and subversive as Blitz may have always been intended for a more niche audience.