Steve McQueen’s Blitz offers a strong showcase of life in London during World War II, but fails to expand beyond any generic ideas or challenge character archetypes. This Blitz review was made possible due to an early screening at the BFI London Film Festival.
Whilst the premise of a Steve McQueen war epic may excite you as something different and interesting, it fails to go far with the concept and instead is a generic adventure home story intertwined with boring and unnecessary scenes because when you hire Saoirse Ronan, you make sure she has a lot of time.
Whilst not the most thrilling or interesting war movie of even the past decade, it is intimate and personal – prevalent traits of McQueen’s work. To get an idea of the personal nature of this story, look no further than how McQueen has treated it during the festival circuits – he didn’t apply to Cannes, Venice or any other prominent festivals but instead decided that it should have its world premiere at the London Film Festival. This is a film about the ordinary people affected by the Blitz, not those making the decisions or benefitting from it.
The strongest aspects of Blitz are easily the technical work, the real star of the show here is the sound design. Right from the beginning of the movie, the auditorium is drowned out by haunting sounds of screaming and an incredibly loud firehouse. As far as setting the tone for your movie from the start goes, this is very effective. You are immediately thrust into this world and informed of the sense of danger. This is a simple yet smart choice from McQueen, we could have easily opened to bombs falling on London or following hectic screaming as people run around, but this small scale scene of firefighters trying to hold back a rogue nozzle. This intimacy echoes throughout the whole film, as characters and individuals are what drive the narrative. As George (Elliott Heffernan) finds his way back home, he runs into a revolving cast of characters that introduce us to the different types of people in London and the roles people undertook in response to the war. The best of these by far is Ife, played subtly by Benjamin Clementine. Ife befriends George and their relationship carries the middle section of the movie, using him as a way for George to find confidence in his identity and discover himself.
The theme of identity is gently touched on, though not strongly explored – it almost feels as if it’s here because McQueen knows to acknowledge the racial divide in the country at the time, but he never does much interesting with it outside of one scene inside of a bunker. George’s dad mostly remains a mystery, but he appears briefly to highlight the prevalent racism in 1940s London. Whilst this is emotional and touching, it feels like there are multiple movies going on within this movie. Whilst it attempts to be multiple different things and touch on various inequalities and divides within the city during a difficult period, it then fails to find its own identity and conceive a strong narrative for itself.
Even the characters that George comes across such as Stephen Graham’s Albert feel like half-hearted caricatures as opposed to characters that exist within their own right – it never feels like you disappear into the world here and it is always clear that you’re watching a performance. This is true even of the lead characters. Whilst George, played well by newcomer Elliott Heffernan, is played well, he again feels as if he is just doing stuff because it needs to happen for the movie to occur as opposed to his actions always feeling fuelled by the narrative or characters around him. Most notably, Saoirse Ronan does a brilliant job with such a small role and with very little to do. Infact, almost all of her scenes are meaningless. Whilst they aim to showcase life for the average person during the titular Blitz, it is constantly overshadowed by the actual interesting story of George trying to get home. Every time it cuts back to Rita, the movie comes to a halt and feels as if it stops in its tracks until we return to the main narrative and back to the exciting stuff. There is no point in mentioning Harris Dickinson – his significance in this review is equal to his significance in the movie.
Perhaps most disappointingly is the lack of a solid identity for the film, or a director’s stamp. The film is super personal and the relationship between Rita and George is the fuel for the whole narrative, but the side stories take away from this and present the audience with other potential movies that could have been better than the one we are watching. There is very little McQueen in here and it feels like it could have been directed by anybody, it is only his insight on race that makes it feel like it was directed by him. Other than that, you could have put any name on the front of the film and it wouldn’t have been questioned.
The film likely could have benefited from a director that could shape a better script and better handle the tension. No moments ever feel tense and are super predictable. Every time George finds himself in a problem, you know he is easily going to find his way out of it and he does – every time. Despite it being so cliche and lacking any real tension, the human story does get you invested and the beautiful cinematography keeps you unable to look away. However, it falls short of being anything special and ends up feeling more like a TV movie you’d watch with your family at Christmas or something that the BBC would have right on the front of iPlayer.
There are many good ideas here, but they never quite come together into anything interesting. Due to the lack of anything for all the actors besides Elliott to do and the predictable but somewhat investing narrative, the movie is just fine and will likely only be mentioned again for a few nominations during awards season and then not beyond that.
Blitz is directed by Steve McQueen and stars Elliott Heffernan, Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clementine, Stephen Graham and Leigh Gill. Steve McQueen, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Yariv Milchan, Arnon Milchan, Anita Overland, Michael Schaefer and Adam Somner serve as producers.
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