In the earlier years of World War II, Britain was bombarded by Hitler, the most that the locals could do was take cover in the tunnels and chambers beneath the earth’s surface and pray. In the fashion of films portraying evil, it is director Steve McQueen who begins his new work, ‘Blitz’, back in London as the war raged on. The Fire brigades are seen trying to suppress an uncontrolled fire outbreak but visibilities of the scenario are bleak as more bombs loom around the corner. Next, the way the action unfolds shifts to other images: blurred movement of the kaleidoscope in which there is water flowing fast, the sound of a gramophone that makes soft music, and black and white images of daffodils while a quiet lyric from a piano brings us back to the life of the punching bass and other scenes. Good to see McQueen still maintains the experimental touch despite the fact that these are just an interlude in the long suffering of watching the war from the edge of the door.
Rita (Saoirse Ronan), her father and wife Gerald (musician Paul Weller), and her nine year old son George (Elliot Heffernan) are all loved to the hilt by the working class district dominated by the German bombs. Worried about her son’s safety, she decides to send him to the countryside but George, already experiencing a cattle class treatment on the train and is longing for home, abandons the train and begins his long traveled voyage back home.
At the same time, Rita is coping with factory work and the strain of sandbagging and volunteering to help her displaced neighbors while also recalling the brief time she had with George’s father’s when news of her son’s sudden disappearance adds fuel to the fire of her already distressing life.
Of course, other films have tackled the topic of the Blitz, such as ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’, ‘Hope and Glory’, ‘Atonement’, and perhaps most interesting, ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and Wardrobe,’ which starts with a group of siblings leaving to the country to escape the fury of war. However, here the Blitz is not an epilogue, not a background menace, and not a rapid succession of an event. It’s aspiration to depict the reality of existence the struggle for life, nurture and being amidst the chaos of death and destruction that ensues every single day. These events are punctuated with clashing notes composed by Hans Zimmer, a metallic shock coated sound, as if the sounds bounced off obliterated trains and falling bombs. George’s biography has elements of “Oliver Twist” and “Empire of the Sun” as a child who becomes a stranger to life’s birthright and innocence, faces savagery earlier than intended. He walks through death, threat and a baffling bus journey with grim determination, ever watchful for the authorities trying to send him back on the next train to the countryside. In the role of George, Heffernan makes a wonderfully rich and diverse portrayal, who is not intimidated and rather plays with curiosity.
As George makes his way home, danger presents itself almost at every turn, and even until the end of the movie, the danger and stakes remain constant. The story focuses also on Kathy’s son or rather her attention to him and all the adult things Kathy’s mother, Rita, has to deal with.
As Rita, Ronan just overwhelms almost every scene as a loving mother character who will go to extreme lengths to provide what every child expects to be McQueen’s direction and Le Saux’s cinematography, together with the production teams who painted sets, costumes and makeup quite strategically to focus on her. Of British origin, French resident and gradually becoming a design star, I Le Saux, who has previously seen such films as “Little Women”, “High Life”, and “Only Lovers Left Alive”, manages to combine the richness of colors in the lighting with period detail; the dark timber of the crowd-filled dance Australians abounded in factory blues ghettos amphitheater and brown brick walls.
What is significant though is how Rita’s red lipstick and coat stand out in the same way that the little girl in red does in Steven Spielberg’s ‘Schindler’s List. All the small details are captured by the camera such as the mud on the shoes of George after hours of travel or the Rita’s coworkers teasingly drawing imaginary line around their lips because they know that they are around men in a bar. The hottest moment according to the viewer is when Rita together with George Shrine’s father move to some club together and dance like a totally different. In another scene as if by magic, McQueen managed to turn goodbye wanking into a dance beat, among other things. It does not matter that some of the details have nothing to do with the plot of the drama, but they make the viewers feel the time, the feelings and the place of action of the characters.
As the viewer is already prepared for the crescendo of the tensions in the film the emotions and physical aspects, ‘Blitz’ written and directed by McQueen as the irony is attempts to explore much more. It also reveals the racism in Britain in those days, topic he already touched in his interesting film series ‘Small Axe’. Half-caste George as a little boy gets bullied without mercy by white Christians as Kyriakos who is not one of them.
Long ago, his father had been assaulted on the streets and later handcuffed and sent back to Grenada. George meets Ife, a Nigerian soldier portrayed by Benjamin Clementine, who is outgoing and engaging, but all George can think to say to him is that he is not Black. It is only after he witnesses Ife in solidarity with marginalized people in a shelter that he accepted being Black. In relation to the story, the fact that there are almost no moving cinematographic documentations of the Black British life in the given time is almost convincing, even if it does feel a bit unpolished. Some of McQueen’s writing borders on the blunt or awkward which seems to be at variance with the disciplined visual storyteller’s approach. Ife’s dialogue clumsily speech about Hitler separating people or a guy’s presentation of socialist objectives in relation to Christianity is powerful, but it lacks the polish of McQueen’s work.
Regardless of their gravitas in a negative sense, ‘Blitz’ is a remarkable historical drama which features riveting plots that are character driven. One can always be on the alert, expectation that has the persistent weight of the London fog always in the air. The screams from the air raid sirens will never let any second pass unnoticed. Threats from above are commonplace interruptions of birthday parties and other celebrations and dinners and bedtimes. However, things do not stop.
Rita is back at the factory, Gerald is listening to the radio while George is busy playing with his cat but the monotony is short lived. The motion picture is more than just for entertainment with beautiful landscapes; it is a touching story of hope and endurance which is still a bit too real even today, almost a hundred years later.
For more movies like Blitz visit 123Movies.