Joyce Glasser reviews Blitz (November 1, 2024) Cert 12A, 120 mins. In cinemas (Apple TV from the 22nd)
Steve McQueen tells the story of the Blitz from the point of view of one fictitious, but symbolic family, The Hanways, bringing in some two dozen colourful characters who were typical of Londoners suffering, fighting and working through, or taking advantage of, the German bombing of London in 1941. He weaves all these characters into a tapestry against the backdrop of collapsing buildings, explosions, firefighters on the docks, air raid sirens, people sleeping in underground stations, and the half-a-million evacuated children.
It’s beautifully shot but conventional war time stuff, but the director of Grenfell, 12 years a Slave and Hunger has an agenda.
McQueen focuses the story on one of those evacuated children, angelic, mixed-race, nine-year-old George Hanway (talented newcomer Elliott Heffernan) who boards the train with anger, wishing his teary-eyed mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) would die for sending him away. Although he is quickly overcome with guilt, George fears the discrimination of strangers more than the bombing at home with his shielding family.
In that well-lived in home, in the East End, in September 1940, George lies cuddled up with Rita, laughing and playing games when the sirens send them running. Rita, a principled woman with a social conscious, works in a munitions factory and relies on her supportive father Gerald (The Jam’s Paul Weller, dignified and stoic) to share the parenting. Gerald is always playing the piano and singing with his close-knit family. Being a stay-at-home grandfather, the most stereotyped character in the film, leaves him vulnerable to sacrifice, which is not really a spoiler.
The moment George jumps off the train carrying the evacuated children to find his way home like Lassie, you realise you are watching a child’s adventure tale, like Kidnapped or Oliver Twist, but one featuring a boy of colour. None of the adults, including Ronan, have challenging roles. The charismatic Heffernan carries the film.
Kids might have the most fun at the beginning when George jumps into a freight train. He finds himself sharing the compartment with three adorable cockney brothers who are a riot. George judiciously breaks the ice by offering to share his only sandwich (George, like Oliver, wears an invisible halo throughout the film).
But things get scarier the closer George gets to London, where a bus drops him off in a part of the city he doesn’t know. Afraid of being caught and returned to the country, he wanders around staring with longing at the shop windows.
Starving, George accepts the kindness of a stranger, a kind of Nancy to his Oliver Twist who, for a while, George becomes. He is kidnapped by a group of robbers headed by Albert and Beryl (Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke having a blast) who use George to retrieve valuable objects from bombed shops – and the jewels off the corpses in the Café de Paris.
Music fills the film in unlikely ways, from Gerald’s piano to the factory floor, to the polished white night club Le Café de Paris where black performers entertain bejewelled white bourgeois couples until the place is bombed.
Through flashbacks in a jazz-filled speakeasy long before the war, we see Rita dancing with and caressing Marcus (CJ Beckford), a handsome Grenadian. On the way home, the couple are separated by thugs who drag Marcus away, his fate forever unknown to grieving – and pregnant – Rita. George is not told the whole truth about his harrowing beginning but he has a taste of discrimination early on in the film when he’s playing on the street in front of his home.
While George is finding his way home, wary of kind ladies now, Rita is on a frantic search, aided, when he is not on duty, by the surprisingly dull Jack (Harrison Dickenson) a white officer who is clearly smitten by her. But this odd attempt at a love story is so underdeveloped you can only conclude it must be intentional.
McQueen’s camera and script remind us that London was, even back in 1940, a multi-cultural city. He includes in the tapestry of everyday life the little known stories of the minority groups caught up in the war. Some, like Marcus, were subjected to cruel bigotry, some were heroes for their country and some just tried to survive.
So we see a working class white couple putting up a sheet in a shelter to separate themselves from a Sikh family, or the noble, wise Nigerian watch guard, Ife (Benjamin Clementine, superb), a father figure and heroic role model who inspires George to identify as Black. After Ife’s powerful, articulate speech about social cohesion – tickling the tear ducts – all he needs is a miracle to be canonized.
The 80th anniversary of the Normandy invasion was celebrated in a major way back in June as it will no doubt be one of the last times living veterans can be thanked and can bear witness. McQueen seems to have missed the WWII anniversary boat by three years. But with the bombing of Gaza, Israel, and Ukraine, some viewers might find the timing of the release makes the film all the more relevant.
Though engrossing throughout despite and visualised with gritty authenticity, Blitz somehow lacks the lasting impact it should have. It burns brightly on the screen, but quickly fades from memory.
