Steve McQueen – director of Hunger, Shame and 12 Years a Slave – was never going to deliver your typical wartime drama full of bombast and heroics, and so it proves with his powerful new British movie Blitz.
Blitz is set in September 1940 near the start of the German bombing campaign on London. In the face of nightly air raids and a lack of shelters, Rita (Saoirse Ronan) makes the heartbreaking decision to send her nine-year-old boy George (Elliott Heffernan) away to the countryside.
But George is too much of an East London lad to live in the countryside away from his mother and beloved grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller). Shortly into the journey, he escapes from the train and embarks on a perilous journey to return home.
So begins a series of vignettes as George meets the best (and worst) of London, allowing McQueen to portray a ground-level take on the war that's by turns powerful, emotional and uplifting.
Blitz certainly starts as intensely as you'd expect a war movie to. It jumps straight into the aftermath of a recent bombing as the fire service attempts to put out major fires, battling with an errant fire hose. It's an impactful opening that showcases the movie's at times brutal sound design.
But McQueen masterfully negotiates the quiet and the chaos throughout Blitz as terrifying set pieces, such as a flooding of a tube station, are blended with beautiful grace notes like George bonding with a Black air raid warden, Ife (Benjamin Clementine). It's a true journey through a wartime London that we've rarely seen depicted.
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At its heart is Rita, George and Gerald's connection and though they're separated in the main story, McQueen sketches in their backstory with various flashbacks. Even a scene as simple as the trio singing around a piano proves plenty to make their love feel authentic.
It helps when you've got Saoirse Ronan delivering yet another strong performance (including a breathtaking musical performance, as there's nothing she can't do). If anything though, she might be outshone by the charismatic Elliott Heffernan, who's excellent in his debut role.
Blitz is superbly crafted too, with impeccable period production design by Adam Stockhausen and striking cinematography from Yorick Le Saux. Its story might be intimate, but the visual scale is impressive and combined with Hans Zimmer's score, it deserves to be seen on the big screen.
There are obvious parallels to what we're witnessing on the news every day, with McQueen also layering in themes of unity and equality into the story. He's careful to not sensationalise the obvious destruction of the Blitz, but finds haunting ways to portray the suffering, such as a man smoking in his chair after the rest of his house is destroyed.
If there's a complaint to be made, it's that the movie feels increasingly episodic as it goes on. One moment George is discovering his heritage with Ife, the next he's forced into working for a gang, with McQueen never lingering too long. Each encounter is for a purpose, but never feels fully explored enough.
At the same time, Rita is – across the course of the same day – involved in a campaign to open up tube stations during the air raids, performing on the BBC and volunteering at a local shelter. It's clear McQueen wanted to portray a rich tapestry of life in London, but there's almost too much going on.
The episodic nature of the plot holds Blitz back from being McQueen's best movie, but you'll still be fully invested. With a talented supporting cast including Stephen Graham, Kathy Burke and Erin Kellyman, the movie is always engaging and capable of making you laugh in one scene before stunning you to silence the next.
If the ending could prove slightly manipulative for some (although eagle-eyed viewers will spot a clue to it early on), Blitz remains a powerful and unique take on a British war movie, anchored by one of the strong young performances of the year.
Blitz is out now in select UK cinemas and will be released on Apple TV+ on November 22.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
