Blitz, Steve McQueen’s latest directorial venture set during the height of German bombing raids over London, is a visceral and never-shattering cinematic experience. The film perfectly blends McQueen’s early career as a visual artist- who has created commissioned works on the Iraq War– into the popular framework of a mainstream movie. It opens with searing images of firefighters tackling a blaze and overhead footage of the sea rushing below a German Bomber. This then dissolves into a cacophony of static imagery and sound, followed by the silence of a bed of flowers. This blend of the abstract and the palpable perfectly encapsulates its jolting, intimate, and overwhelming narrative.
The film follows Rita (Saoirse Ronan), a factory worker and single mother to her son George (Elliot Heffernan), whose father was deported after being a victim of a racist assault. Ronan is marvellous as always and Heffernan epitomises the word precocious in his first on-screen role. Rita decides to send George away to the countryside as part of Britain’s evacuation effort to maintain children’s safety. However, upset with this, he quite literally jumps off his train to return to the city and find her. The film then follows Rita and George in their bid to be reunited through an intoxicating portrait of a city under siege.
McQueen breathes cinematic life into every frame of this journey as he makes even the smallest moment feel gigantic. Rita’s armament factory possesses a hulking rhythmic beauty, while scenes of George hopping on and off trains and even playing cricket will make you flinch. Along the way, George encounters an assortment of characters, including Benjamin Clémentine’s kindly warden and Stephen Graham’s malign grave robber, who offer an honest cross-section of life and survival during a human crisis. The film also offers an equally honest interrogation of race and inequality in British society. This is depicted through a wordless visit taken by George to an “Empire Arcade” and flashbacks to the beatings and injustice hurled upon Rita’s partner, alongside visits to a socialist shelter offering safety and support to London’s most at-risk.
In a way which reflects McQueen’s statement in a subsequent press conference that “I don’t care about perspective. I care about the truth”, the film never feels preachy or wrought and instead allows these images to tell their own truth. One never feels monologued to as much as presented with an unmediated and unvarnished reality. There is also a remarkably haunting sequence, featuring the vocals of none other than Celeste, where a party of London’s richest taking place in the Club de Paris is cut short by bombing, which leaves its revellers frozen in their own vanity.
Indeed, Blitz is at its absolute best when it haunts and horrifies, as it evokes the terrifying reality of suffering through a bombing raid via a succession of hair-raising vignettes. These moments perfectly marry stylised imagery with a physical boots-on-the-ground perspective, creating electrifying and stomach-churning cinema. One tracking shot follows George venturing from the banks of the Thames through a London engulfed in flames as he weaves through anti-aircraft guns and a crashing plane. This is soon followed by another sequence in a tube station which masterfully builds up dread before exploding into a chaotic scramble which drew expletives from under my breath.
The film contains clear shades of another WWII epic with Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, as both films aim to overload the senses of their audience. Their similarities are undoubtedly furthered by a shared composer in Hans Zimmer who produces yet another booming and staccato score. However, Zimmer’s work for Blitz feels a little more mercurial as it shifts from grinding mechanical overtones to more lyrical melodies to moments where it writhes with screeches.
The film overall has quite a fluid, almost musical, feel as it ebbs and flows throughout its winding journey. At times it is delicate and warm, while in others it explodes with the operatic power of an entire brass section. Blitz is a film which combines the sounds and rhythms of a city in turmoil with its everyday existence into a rousing, if exhausting, concerto. It will leave your body taut and your lungs breathless, but your heart will surely be moved.
Blitz is in select cinemas 1st November and on Apple TV+ 22nd November [And I urge you to see it in cinemas]