Movie Review: Steve McQueen’s WWII drama Blitz is more unconventional than it seems

Set in World War II London, Blitz may technically be Steve McQueen’s first war film. But struggle and survival have long marked the hard and martyr work of a film director.

Despite the settings—slavery in 12 Years a Slave, London in the 1960s and 1980s of West Indian immigrants in Little Axe, the Irish famine in Shame—McQueen was less drawn to the moments of the story because of their dramatic events extremes, not how they test the morality of those in and around combat. Did they close their eyes? Did they risk themselves? Do we remember?

McQueen’s films often ask questions — often uncomfortable ones. This was also true in his non-fiction work. His 2023 short film Grenfell captured the aftermath of the tragic Grenfell Tower fire. Last year’s “Occupied City” compared modern street addresses in Amsterdam with what happened in those exact locations during the Nazi occupation of World War II.

In this film, McQueen juxtaposes past and present, death and life, and some of the same clashes can be found in 1940’s Blitz, which opens in theaters Friday and airs Nov. 22 on Apple TV+. It’s told mostly from the perspective of a 9-year-old boy, George (Elliott Heffernan), whose single mother Rita (a steely Saoirse Ronan) makes the difficult decision to send him to the countryside with thousands of other school runaways. blitz

A year into the war, the bombings are already intense, as is the questionable nature of how some are responding to the ever-present danger and loosening of order. The film opens in a blaze of fire as firefighters battle an out-of-control hose while crowds of people rush to an underground tunnel to hide from the bombers overhead. Outside the station, the gates are locked and the police nearby refuse to open them. It’s an early hint that McQueen’s take on the war will be more complex and ruthless than the usual WWII drama.

The Blitz properly begins when Rita leaves George at the train station. The parting is bitter (“I hate you,” George says on the platform) only because their bond is so strong. While on the train, George soon sees an opportunity to escape and jumps off. The Blitz looks like George’s odyssey trying to get home.

It’s an awkwardly condensed story—the film takes place over the course of a day but feels like a lifetime—that cuts awkwardly between George and Rita. Blitz feels stuck between a conventional war drama and something more adventurous and exploratory. It doesn’t come together the way McQueen’s best work does, but the friction that drives The Blitz makes it a unique and sporadically moving experience.

The revealing sequence takes place at the beginning of the film. Black George, no doubt increasingly anxious about leaving London, boards a passing train to find three young brothers there. After a tense moment, they find camaraderie together. While riding the train, they seem almost carefree. But minutes later, as they flee from authorities at the station, one of the boys is killed instantly by a moving train.

Throughout, Blitz alternates between moments of tenderness and violence, the back and forth that McQueen sees as more than just a part of war. After the train station moment, the film cuts to a flashback of Rita and George’s father, an immigrant from Grenada, Marcus (CJ Beckford). On the way home after a fun night of dancing at a jazz club, a man purposely bumps into Marcus. In the ensuing skirmishes, Marcus is arrested and later quickly deported. In an instant, cruelty and racism can destroy lives as surely as a Nazi bomb from above.

The film stays close to George as he approaches his home in Stepney Green in the East End. The Blitz is far less concerned with aerial bombardment above than festering prejudices and injustices on the ground. In the film’s most Dickensian plot, George is captured and held captive by a Fagin-like criminal (Stephen Graham), whose gang of thieves steals from the dead and robs newly bombed apartments. There are eerie ghostly scenes, mostly one of them in the Café de Paris. One day it’s a co-ed, interracial jazz club, and the next, as depicted in one large-scale grotesque shot by Yorick Le Sault, it’s a bloody ruin.

There are moments of uplift or at least temporary relief. One comes when Rita, who works in a munitions factory wearing a Rosie the Riveter headscarf, sings for a BBC radio program from the factory floor. When Rita learns that George is lost, an unfortunate subplot emerges involving her feud with an unsympathetic boss, a fight with those in charge of the evacuation, and her attempt to find George with the help of a police officer (Harris Dickinson, in a role too vague to resonate ).

However, we see again and again that it takes the conviction and courage of individuals to resist the tide of indifference. Among them is activist Mikey Davis (Lee Gill), who delivers a stirring speech at the shelter. And above all, this includes the Nigerian ARP supervisor Ife (Benjamin Clementine), whom George meets outside a shop advertising coffee and sugar from Africa with caricatures of black faces. Clementine, a talented singer-songwriter, has a radiant presence that warms the remarkably unsentimental film. Ife inspires George with pride and self-confidence as a young black man. For his part, young Heffernan shows no signs of straining to make his first film.

After all, the fact that Blitz is at war may not be its defining feature. London under siege in McQueen’s film is as much at risk of injustice as the German planes. For George, Rita, and the others fighting back, 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 racism, violence, profanity, brief sexuality and smoking. Duration: 120 minutes. Three stars out of four.