Cert – 12, Run-time – 2 hours, Director – Steve McQueen
At the height of the blitz, nine-year-old George (Elliott Heffernan) escapes the train he’s evacuated on to make it back to his mum (Saoirse Ronan) in London, however despite the war he discovers a still-divided city on his journey home.
Blitz is both a stripped-back war drama from writer-director Steve McQueen and one that’s dealing with a number of different themes and ideas. The direct narrative sees nine-year-old George (Elliott Heffernan) jump off the train taking him to the safer place where he’s to be evacuated to in order to make it back home to London, experiencing the height of the Blitz. As he makes the journey home we cut back and forth between his own experiences and those of his mother, factory worker and singer Rita (Saoirse Ronan).
As George experiences a city that remains divided, despite claiming to be united in the war effort, his mother sees that more united spirit, volunteering to help out in the shelter of the underground during air raids, whilst also trying to push ahead despite the last words of her son echoing around her mind – “I hate you.” With the different characters and settings seen throughout there’s something of a chaptered nature to McQueen’s latest as the separate events constructing the progress towards home feel very clear. At just two hours the film has a slightly overlong feel, largely sustained in sequences as the young protagonist gets almost to his doorstep but is sidetracked by the appearance of Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke, both on enjoyable form. With their appearance the film almost enters a dark Oliver Twist feeling as they go from pickpocketing to taking jewels from dead bodies after bombings.
Yet, of all the people George comes across perhaps the most success is in the figure who could most easily go wrong, in the form of Nigerian air raid warden Ife (Benjamin Clementine). Ife, alongside George, experiences racism despite his position and efforts to protect London and those in it. During one key scene he offers a speech to a group seeking shelter underground, after a white couple starts putting up sheets around their bed to split themselves up from those of other ethnicities. The words of unity and how division is exactly what Hitler is fighting for could so easily feel cliched, yet Clementine, with McQueen’s direction, manages to bring a sense of warmth and hope to them, making it a highlight scene. Indeed, Ife’s soft-spoken kindness towards George makes him a standout character in the film as a whole, even if things eventually move on to new characters and locations for both him and his mum.
While dealing with a lot of different points the overall tone of Blitz is kept relatively consistent across the various events helping it to flow in some of the longer moments. It also means, however, that sometime sit skips over ideas that it wants to dig its fingers into more. Certain instances feel as if they could be expanded in exchange for others, or in some cases have a more core focus put on them. There’s still an engaging sense to the film as a whole which remains consistently watchable and has a number of effective moments, particularly through McQueen’s direction and the way he observes a number of scenes and wills his characters on. Not everything has a complete push, but there’s still a solid film playing out which should successfully work for all ages, as McQueen has hoped.
Narratively simplistic yet full of events and ideas, Blitz occasionally feels as if it could cut some moments which contribute to a slightly overlong feel to expand others which emphasise a sense of warmth and hope in their cliché-avoiding messages.
Just A Little Bit Random 