Steve McQueen’s ‘Blitz’ Looks Beyond the WWII London Bombings at the Human Face of War

Alci Rengifo

Steve McQueen’s “Blitz” opens with a harrowing moment where firefighters respond to one of the many burning buildings in London under Nazi bombing raids. A firefighter’s face smashes into a firehose, which then goes berserk like some wild animal. In this director’s trademark style, it is a strange but visceral image that captures the larger idea of what war does to society. McQueen’s World War II film has many stunning sequences (some reaching apocalyptic scope) but the director’s most piercing achievement is balancing the heroism of the event with starker, unsavory human observations. It is comforting to think that in a time of crisis, we would all come together. Reality is much crueler.

It is the early days of the Blitz, the term borrowed from the Blitzkrieg idea of “lightning war” invented by the Nazis. Hitler has begun bombing Britain and Londoners live under a virtual state of siege, seeking shelter underground while trying to keep the war effort going. Rita (Saoirse Ronan) is a young single mother in a working class home with her father, Gerald (Paul Weller), and 9-year-old son, George (Elliott Heffernan). To make a living, Rita works at a munitions factory. She also fears for George’s safety and decides to send him out into the country with other children. Restless and irritated by the racist bullies he encounters, George literally jumps off the train and makes his way back to London, just as the bombing raids threaten to become even more intense.

McQueen’s cinema tends to explore lives that undergo grueling odysseys. “12 Years a Slave,” “Hunger,” “Shame” and even his one Hollywood genre film, “Widows,” follow people undergoing immense trials, some personal and others personal but historical. “Blitz” is McQueen’s biggest movie in terms of scale, but easily falls into the latter category. George’s wanderings through a bombed out London is the main plot, but McQueen detours around the city to capture all the microcosmic lives being impacted by the war. In a sense he’s also entrapping those expecting another WWII movie with heroism in every frame. His screenplay is a radical gesture disguised as a period piece. Unlike other filmmakers, he gives voice to groups we never see in these films, but who very well formed the fabric of British society. While lost in London, George meets Ife (Benjamin Clémentine), a Nigerian soldier making the rounds, warning residents to keep their lights off at night so as not to attract bombers. We see the contempt in a white man’s face when given instructions by the Black soldier. 

This is the most important element in McQueen’s approach. He refuses to fully romanticize a society at war. Even as bombs are raining down on the city and people are forced to huddle underground, racism is ludicrously constant. George is picked on by white kids on the train who compare him to a dog. In the bomb shelters underground, a white couple wants to hang a cloth to separate them from an Indian family. A harrowing flashback reveals why Rita was left a single mother, when her Black Caribbean boyfriend was arrested for defending himself against white attackers. Beyond race there are also class issues. Rita, an excellent singer from a musical family, sings for a radio show at her workplace. Then co-workers storm the stage and demand the government open underground tunnels to shelter the defenseless people. Such details have been glossed over with the typical, hyper heroic portrayals of the war.

McQueen reunites with regular collaborators to frame these truths on a rich canvas. Yorick Le Saux’s cinematography is rich and warm, then stunning in moments where George looks up from a hiding place, to see searchlights and air defense fire streaking the sky. Hans Zimmer’s music score creates a ticking clock sensation. Through George we experience the terror of bombs dropping on a city, its residents desperate to escape, or organizing to survive. A filmmaker of sensual style, McQueen also captures the intoxicating mania of the era. A lively dinner party led by a ribald singer can be interrupted by bombs. A feverish flashback reveals how Rita met her deported lover amid the dancing and music of London’s Caribbean community. Regular life, with all of its pain and joys, then easily gets sucked into a vortex when the world goes mad.

Performances are key here and McQueen always pulls some great ones out of his actors. Saoirse Ronan has the necessary, aching urgency, but the real attention grabber will be young Elliott Heffernan, who has to play a child already forced to grow up quickly. Before the war, he clearly had to deal with the society’s racism, now he’s encountering all the good and horrible the war bubbles up. Some adults are nurturing, others, like a band of looters led by Albert (Stephen Graham), see in George the chance to use him for getting into difficult, debris-strewn places to grab abandoned valuables. Every actor has the acute sense of people swinging between survival instincts and fatalism. Anything can happen, as McQueen demonstrates when brilliantly re-staging moments as when London train tunnels flooded during the bombing raids, killing many of those who had been sleeping inside. McQueen still gives in once or twice to a more classic tone. In a scene that could be in a ‘40s movie, Ife gives an inspiring speech about the need to band together and see each other as human beings, because what Hitler represents is precisely more division and racism.

Sadly, it’s not as if we truly learn from history. “Blitz” arrives as new conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine render cities and entire peoples to blood and dust. Families are still being annihilated or seeking shelter from the horror dropping in from the sky. A good war movie reaches beyond the setting of its story. Some critics have complained McQueen’s script packs too much or gets distracted by its various characters. What matters most is the sensation he creates of palpable, human fear and the roar of a bomb exploding on people. McQueen reminds us that it was people facing the Blitz, of different backgrounds and colors. He will not let it slide that the worst of us can also emerge during a crisis. It would be nice if we learned something from a movie like this and remember what it depicts is not some ancient occurrence, just simply a past version of something still happening right now.

“Blitz” begins streaming Nov. 22 on Apple TV+.