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Offering a critical exploration into how human cruelty and its resulting suffering can fuel resilience and courage into its victims has helped turn filmmaking into an emotional, realistic art form. Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave director-producer, Steve McQueen has once again thrived in exploring how devastating cultural situations have long impacted society in his latest drama, Blitz.
The BAFTA Award-winning McQueen wrote, helmed and produced Blitz, his first feature since the 2018 neo-noir heist thriller, Widows. With wars currently happening in the Middle East and Europe that have rivaled World War II, the filmmaker’s storytelling approach in his latest historical drama features poignant relevance to modern audiences.
Blitz follows the epic journey of George (Elliott Heffernan in his feature film acting debut), a 9-year-old boy living in World War II London. He’s one of more than half-a-million children who are being evacuating London. His mother, Rita Hanway (Saoirse Ronan), a munitions worker, has placed him on a train to travel to the English countryside for safety.
George is so resentful that he has to leave his mother and his grandfather, Gerald (Paul Weller), that he becomes determined to return home to them in East London. Only an hour into the ride, he jumps off the train onto the lush green countryside.
©Courtesy of Apple TV+
The young boy then begins his journey to return the city and, once he gets there, back to his neighborhood. Along the way, he meets people who genuinely try to help him in his quest, while others only try to use his situation to their advantage.
While setting out on his own to return home, George must also contend with racial remarks, as he is biracial. His father, Marcus (CJ Beckford), who was deported from England back to his native Caribbean before his son’s birth in the early 1930s, is Black. On his journey, George ultimately finds a father-figure that he can truly relate to in Ife (Benjamin Clementine), a kind Nigerian immigrant who is working as a blackout warden.
McQueen’s enthralling script switches between George’s difficult journey home and the struggles Rita is experiencing while balancing her guilt of sending her son away and surviving the air raids. In Rita’s timeline, the authorities soon learn that George has escaped from the train. They’re so determined to find him that they visit the munitions factory where Rita works to inform her that her son is missing.
Rita becomes so upset that the adults who are in charge of evacuating the city’s children lost track of her son, she immediately starts searching for him on her own. She finds comfort in local fireman Jack (Harris Dickinson), who strongly admires her, even though she doesn’t fully realize it. With Jack’s help, Rita does whatever it takes to find her son.
Blitz is an emotional and visual triumph whose stellar character-driven story is set against the bleak deterioration of London during the titular wartime attack. Heffernan’s performance as George in his coming-of-age journey during England’s early entry into World War II amplifies the movie’s tension and stark imagery.
McQueen has stated that he was inspired to pen the project’s script while conducting research for his anthology film series, Small Axe. He saw a photo of a young Black boy with a suitcase standing at a train station. The scribe pondered what the boy might have been experiencing the Blitz.
McQueen, who discovered Heffernan with Blitz‘s casting director, Nina Gold, during an extensive casting call for the lead role of George, also revealed the actor looks exactly like the boy in the picture. The performance from the young actor, who had only starred in school plays before being cast the drama, proves that his likeness to the boy in the photo wasn’t the only justifying factor in his casting.
©Courtesy of Apple TV+
Besides Heffernan’s still presence and steady gaze, the young actor formed an instant connection with Ronan. From the first moment Rita is showcased on screen reassuring her son about that he will be fine during his impending evacuation, George is apprehensive about his mother’s claims. The actor infuses his character with a credibility in his claims that he wants to remain with his family.
Heffernan also captures the anxiety that McQueen interwove throughout George’s character arc. The young boy is nervous about meeting people outside of London who might not be comfortable being the company of biracial children. That worry in part leads to him jumping from the train and venturing back to find his family in London.
The protagonist’s fateful journey is partially driven by composer Hans Zimmer and his orchestra’s electrifying, but equally subtle, score. Another notable addition to Blitz‘s musical element is during a scene in which Rita, whose father plays the piano in a pub, sings during a live, morale-boasting BBC broadcast. The Golden Globe-winning Ronan soulfully crooned the mournful song Winter Coat, which was co penned by McQueen and Nicholas Britell.
Ronan and her co-stars, as well as the locations they performed in, were captured on screen by the movie’s beautiful cinematography, which was shot by Yorick Le Saux. Whether the cameras were sweeping across the massive environments Rita and George find themselves in, or capturing their intimate reactions to the conflict around them, the cinematography emphasizes their turmoil.
While on the surface Blitz is a historical war drama, McQueen’s emotionally and aesthetically raw storytelling approach is driven by a poignant relevance to modern audiences. Le Saux’s equally sweeping and intimate cinematography and Zimmer’s score, which is driven by notes of dread and sorrow, support the film’s character-driven, coming-of-age story. Aided by Ronan and Heffernan’s stellar connection and performances, the movie is the latest emotional and visual triumph from McQueen.
Overall: A-
Blitz had its North American premiere last month at the New York Film Festival. The movie went on to open in American theaters on November 1, and made it streaming debut on Apple TV+ this weekend, on November 22.
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