'Blitz' is More Hollow Than Harrowing
Steve McQueen is a very good filmmaker. As a matter of fact, he was once one of my favorite directors. He makes harrowing stories tackling civil rights, race, and sex addiction. Somewhere along the way, I lost track of his career. I have missed out on Widows, as well as his five-part movie series Small Axe and three-part series Uprising. Oddly enough, McQueen hasn't done a theatrical film since 2018. One would think after winning the Oscar for Best Picture with 12 Years a Slave he'd have multiple features. So how is McQueen's return to the big screen? Disappointingly average.
Blitz is a war film similar to any other. It's not about soldiers or concentration camp survivors, nor is it about politicians of that time. The story takes place from the point of view of a young child and his mother. It would be a different angle if it weren't about World War II. How many times can we cover this war until it's been overdone? WWII has become a cliche in itself. If you're going to tell the story about the war, please tell something different. A survival story from the Nazi bombings known as the Blitz would be terrifying if the movie weren't so predictable. To give some background, the Blitz was a German bombing campaign that hit the United Kingdom from September 7, 1940, to May 11, 1941. What should be exhilarating feels plane.
The movie wastes no time introducing the plot. It opens with a title informing the audience about the Blitz, then cuts to a group of men trying to put out a raging fire coming from a destroyed building. The camera work is hectic, providing the Saving Private Ryan pseudo-documentary look. Right away, we know this picture is going to be intense. Yet it feels almost factory-made. There are movies on the BBC that feature wrecked homes during WWII. Maybe not on the same scale, but they feel the same as Blitz. The movie is a story about a mother and her son who are separated during the bombings. To keep her son out of harm's way, Rita (Saoirse Ronan) sends her son to a train that will take him somewhere safe, hopefully. Nobody knows where the Germans might strike next.
Although being separated from each other, I never felt the pain the son felt. George (Elliott Heffernan) keeps saying, "I want to go home," but I don't believe him. Elliot Heffernan's performance doesn't sell me. Most of the time, he just sounds bored. I know it's not nice to criticize a child's performance, but if it's something that's dragging down the narrative, then it is what it is. The real acting comes from Saoirse Ronan. She projects exactly what she should be feeling at any given scene. She's like an Irish version of Julianne Moore, where she can cry on command.
With all this negativity, you'd think I'd hate this film. Not so. I just expect more from this filmmaker. Steve McQueen has made very stylish pictures that relied on long takes to push each scene forward. His films never felt conventional, at least from the ones I've seen. 12 Years a Slave is the most traditional film of McQueen's I watched. Blitz isn't really anything unconventional. It tries to have a heart, but it's missing something. It's not that it's missing the right scenes where mother and son bond. The problem lies in the structure.
When seeing the movie from George's point of view, we witness multiple horrific bombings. Then the movie intercuts to Rita, sucking the tension away from the film. Most of Rita's scenes contain her searching for her son or flashing back to her relationship with him. The nonlinear storytelling doesn't do the film any favors, either. There's no real emotional thread because of the disjointed style of the narrative.
One of the more engaging characters in the film is a black British soldier named Ife (Benjamin Clémentine). As you can imagine, in 1940, Ife was mistreated due to the color of his skin. There's a moment where a white soldier will not allow Ife access somewhere. Ife tells the soldier, "There's no segregation here." Then goes on a plee for equality over Hitler's division, mirroring America's current elections. The movie slightly covers race rather than fully tackling it. It's an element of the story but not a driving force.
Blitz could have benefitted from two things: casting a different kid as George and showing everything through his eyes. If the film focussed solely on its protagonist instead of having two, the distance between the parent and the child would feel much greater. It could also build a stronger relationship between the supporting cast who meets George along the way. Steve McQueen could learn how to make a conventional WWII flick that is still something unique. If only he had taken notes from Empire of the Sun. Because when in doubt, go to Spielberg.
Blitz is now playing in select theaters and will be available for streaming on Apple TV+ on November 22.
