Courtesy Apple TV+
As the final act of filmmaker Steve McQueen’s World War II drama Blitz kicks off, a particularly gorgeous moment unfolds wherein the entire patronage of a hopping swing nightclub goes suddenly silent at the sound of an air raid siren and looks up in unison. Everything from the costumes to the music to the hairstyles feels just right, and the jarring manner in which McQueen leaps to the aftermath and a room full of corpses feels both shocking yet shamefully magnetic. Unfortunately, this represents the high point of the newest film from the 12 Years a Slave auteur, and the rest feels padded or slow—or both.
Blitz occurs in London during those eponymous bombings from the Germans during WWII, circa 1940-1941. There and then, we follow young George (newcomer Elliott Heffernan) as his mother Rita (Ladybird alum Saorise Ronan) begrudgingly decides to evacuate him to the countryside alongside untold numbers of other children. George doesn’t much like this plan, however, and hops off the train to head home, which leads to an Odyssey-type journey of mythic proportions replete with tragedy, good and evil characters and seemingly endless peril. Along the way, George sees so much death, comes to terms with being Black in a majority-white country and runs afoul of an Oliver Twist-ish Fagin type with a gang of thieving ruffians in his employ. And that’s just a few of the things George experiences. All the while, The Blitz itself continues—the bombs fall, the people die and George’s mom freaks the eff out because her 9-year-old son is just, like, out there somewhere doing who-knows-what.
McQueen certainly wins points for visual presentation. Blitz is at turns hauntingly gorgeous, tragically violent and unflinchingly hopeful. Does the film adhere to that unspoken everything-is-kinda-washed-out rule of WWII cinema coloe palette? Yup. Though it is admittedly somewhat refreshing to see the war through the eyes of a child. Pity, then, that Heffernan just isn’t very good as an actor yet. Ronan is, of course, noteworthy as the tortured mother. She’s almost always excellent, actually. Through flashbacks, we learn where George’s father went—and why—and despite some tediously non-dimensional Rosie the Riveter-type friends who only really slow her down, Rita remains tenacious and tough, both of which Ronan manages to convey without sacrificing a deeper vulnerability.
The true magic comes in certain supporting characters. Benjamin Clémentine particularly shines as a young Nigerian man who helps George find home, both physically and emotionally; and Leigh Gill (Joker) cuts right to the essence of humanity as a borderline anarchist running a bomb shelter. These characters also seem to get the best of McQueen’s script, but even they don’t distract from the statistical impossibility that is the number of terrible events George must face. Still, McQueen at least tries to give us a perspective not often seen in war films. Blitz isn’t about heroism or even good versus evil—it’s about love and survival and the lengths to which we’ll go for both. Aren’t they the reasons we do anything in the first place?
6
+Beautiful; some supporting characters; Ronan always brings her A-game
-Feels padded; other supporting characters; ends quite suddenly
Blitz
Directed by McQueen
With Ronan, Heffernan, Clémentine and Gill
Center for Contemporary Arts, PG-13, 120 min.
