In London, in late 1940, German bombs fell, erupting into an inferno of buildings engulfed in glowing orange flame. People die in their living rooms, sitting in their chairs. In the streets, air raid sirens wail as a growing number of civilians surround a fortified underground train station, trying to convince police to let them inside. This is the desperate face of war. However…life goes on. Many of the buildings look like skeletons, but the shops and markets remain open, people walk the streets by day, and reckless patrons continue the dance party at night…
As a film director, British director Steve McQueen may be one of the last of the old-school classicists. That’s not necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when you see one of McQueen’s films, such as 12 Years a Slave, with its searing vision of human cruelty and resilience, or Hunger, about Irish prison hero Bobby Sands. In these two films, McQueen turns courage and suffering into terrifying art. However, McQueen has always had a fluid, accessible storytelling style that is, in his own way, commercially polished. You feel it in every moment of “Blitz,” the lavish drama set during the eight-month Nazi bombing of London starting in September 1940.
As the film opens, firefighters battle a building engulfed in flames, a firehose coiled around it like a giant snake; It’s the film’s way of saying that war is a monster now unleashed. Ominously, McQueen positions his camera under the high-explosive bombs falling from the night sky, showing us the flow of panic and anxiety on the ground below.
“Blitz,” as befits a film set in a European World War II outpost, has its share of devastating spectacle. But it’s not primarily an action war film. It’s a human drama. What might surprise you, if you’re a McQueen fan, is that it’s a conventional, middle-of-the-road Hollywood-style shocker. Taken on its own terms, “Blitz” is well-executed, but it could have been Barry Levinson’s 1992 Oscar-winning film.
The central character, George (Elliot Heffernan), is a 9-year-old boy with a pessimistic outlook and sly eyes, who early joins more than 500,000 children being evacuated from London. His mother, Rita Hanway (Saoirse Ronan), a munitions worker, has put him on a train, and George is so upset by the fact that he has to leave her and his grandfather, the kindly piano-playing George (a nice detour next to Paul Weller’s jam), that he tells her he “hates her” and sits down He stands still as the train takes off, ignoring Rita as she runs in her smart red suit to keep up with him, looking like one of those old people tugging at their heartstrings – bye-bye movie.
Where is George sent? The movie never fully explains this (which is a bit odd), even though it’s supposed to be well taken care of. But George is having none of it. It wasn’t long before he threw his suitcase off the train and after a moment jumped straight off it, landing in the lush green countryside. The film then charts his journey to London, and once there, back to his neighborhood – a mini-Candide odyssey as he continues to encounter people who try to help him (or, in one case, force him into a group of people). A Dickensian gang of thieves), only to see fate consign him to the next encounter. The episodes arrive like clockwork, and after a while we realize that this is what a movie looks like. The authorities, knowing that George has disappeared, are also after him.
Meanwhile, we follow the fortunes of Rita, who in her ordinary appearance is so attractive, blonde and feisty that, in her factory head scarf, she could practically be the poster image for British Rosie the Riveter. (At one point someone literally refers to her as Beautiful Rita.) “Blitz” is well shot, well acted, and given a luxurious wartime sheen by cinematographer Yorick Le Saux. Hans Zimmer’s music is sprinkled with cacophonous tones of dread. But these are mostly war memoirs as crowd-pleasing inspirations.
It’s also a traditional, passionate message film about race and tolerance. George, who is black, never knew his father, Marcus (C.J. Beckford). There’s a flashback to Rita and Marcus dancing and dancing in a hot jazz club in the early 1930s, but when they leave the club, Marcus is taunted and attacked by white thugs, and the pop men, of course, hit back with a bandwagon. for him far. This is the last we will see of him. George endures his share of racist bullying, but when he arrives at an asylum in London, where someone has tried to corral the Jewish refugees, the film gives us a mini-lecture on how this happened — and, by implication, what George faced — is the very force the country is fighting in Hitler. To say that this liberal lesson is in order does not mean that it is wrong.
McQueen, who wrote and directed Blitz, has a smooth style that carries you along. However, I can’t say that “Blitz” ever ventures into morally fascinating or terribly complex territory. Rita has no hidden quirks, no trace of the dark side. She is simply a brave mother, with a beautiful singing voice, trying to reunite with her son – and at one point, takes a stand in solidarity with her colleagues at the Works Wonders factory. George frowns a lot, but he is a brave and resourceful child who commands our admiration and sympathy. At some point, he meets a Nigerian expatriate named Effie (Benjamin Clementine), whose job is to tell people to turn off the lights during a nighttime power outage. He is such a kind-hearted character that we enjoy his benevolence. Upon meeting Eve, George tells him that he – George – is not black. (This reflects his ambivalence because he grew up without his father.) But later, after reconnecting with Ife, George changes his tune; He sees and embraces who he is. Meanwhile, Rita connects with Private Jack (Harris Dickinson), who seems, indirectly, as if he might become her comrade.
Does “Blitz” move you? In a literal way, yes. McQueen recreates London during the Blitz with such “you’re there” detail and, at moments, with such a ruined hellish grandeur that we feel like we know the place and its citizens too. However, there is something universal about the film’s journey. Wartime has a way of bringing out the best and worst in people and everything in between. But there is an uncompromising nobility in “Blitz,” as there was in Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast.” It’s hard not to be moved by it, but the film, for all its craft, seems muffled by good intentions.