SAORISE RONAN IN BLITZ

STEVE MCQUEEN: BLITZ (2024) - NYFF CLOSING NIGHT FILM - NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

A tour de force depiction of London under seige

Steve McQueen's new film is a stunning recreation of London's blitz, as the eight months of WWII Nazi blitzkrieg bombardment ofthe English capital, from Sept. 7, 1940 to May 11, 1941, is called. Providing a panorama of this period is what he's primarily doing, with some significant events and a good look at English racism. The foreground plot of a 9-year-old mixed race boy called George (Eliott Heffermann) who is separated from his mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) when put on a train to be evacuated to the country, and then is reunited with her a day later, may seem both flimsy and conventional as a frame on which to hang what unfolds as a truly epic collection of explosive moments and significant themes. The criticism that this is more conventional than the director's other films (Bradshaw in the Guardian[ typically calls it an "unashamedly old-fashioned wartime adventure") is superficially valid. But it's a little ironic and somewhat beside the point given the level of realistic recreation achieved here, which is not at all ordinary and makes use of means that are thoroughly modern. This is a highly accomplished film and is one of the best modern cinematic celebrations of the city of London.

Modern cinematic recreations of war can be breathtaking.* McQueen proves it with a prologue that plunges us into a burning, bombed block of London as firemen try desperately to point fire hoses at buildings engulfed in flames. Hoses fly in all directions, giant hunks of buildings are everywhere, all is afire, and the clatter is deafening. As an introduction this is warming that there's a danger the physical will overwhelm the human story. But what follows, anchored by the camera on the feisty, unusually brave boy alternating with scenes of his equally plucky mother, is nonetheless very human and colored by the working class accent of foreground action.

There are, accordingly, street scenes around where George lives, both at the beginning of his momentous experiences and at the end of it; remarkable recreations of the armaments factory Rita works in with a whole complete plot line; the trip on the steam engine train out into the country and George's adventure as a train jumper; a key episode when George is taken under the wing of a Nigerian Air Raid Warden, Ife (Benjamin Clémentine), based on a real person, who gives a stirring lecture to white Londoners in in the air raid shelter on forgetting their differences, perhaps the film's main teaching moment, when George in pride of identification learns to acknowledge and embrace that he is black.

There is a ghoulish and revelatory episode of looting and corpse robbing by an evil band George is forcefully recruited to for a while. Bradshaw comments that these "Dickensian" figures with their "gargoyle faces," played by Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke,"come very close to stealing the whole film" for a while.

These are great events seen by ordinary people. Rita and George live with grandpa Gerald (Paul Weller) in an ordinary block of Stepney, east London. She now works in an armaments factory, and this, as well as the women workers' revolt, is richly recreated, as every location will be, and the steam engine train, the clothes, the women's gaudy forties makeup. And the continual casual and not-so-casual racism of white people around people of color.

What did you do if you were poor and in the middle of blitz-bombed London? Well, you could send your child in a group by train to be housed in the country where it was safe. This is the turning point. Rita does put George on such a train, but he submits only angrily and unwillingly. His sullen reaction, which he later regrets, foreshadows what he will, astonishingly, do: he will jump off the train with his little suitcase, and thereafter endeavor to hop on a train back to London. As he does this, he has a series of adventures that fill up the rest of the action.

Emily Zemler in the Observer as well as other writers point to various other real-life details and figures touched on in McQueen's rapid-fire panorama. There is the private air raid shelter run by social activist Mickey Davies (Leigh Gill) where Rita volunteers at night. We see how many took shelter in Tube stations (memorialized in drawings by sculptor Henry Moore), some of which collapsed and were flooded: such a one almost traps George. There is a chic nightclub, Café de Paris, where revelers in evening clothes dripping with jewels sip champagne and ignore the reality outside, till it is bombed and destroyed and turned to a charnel house: this is stunningly recreated too, and George must escape from the domination of the pillagers there.

While George is lost and wandering in London, Rita has learned of his disappearance from the train to the country and is rushing around madly in search of him, sometimes helped by a neighbor who is a firefighter, Jack (Harris Dickinson). This excellent actor is, as has been commented, underused, and doesn't get to have a memorable moment as some do. Not surprising: this is primarily a faceted portrait of a massive event, as other great war films have been.

It's all seamlessly, and explosively, bound together not only by editor Peter Sciberras but by the score of Hans Zimmer, who is still capable of an original touch. This is a remarkable film. I am an admirer. But I also felt blitzed myself. Perhaps it can't be otherwise. We become citizens, feeling the helplessness and smallness together with the beauty and warmth of so many little moments. Nonetheless one can grant Leslie Felperin's point in her Hollywood Reporter] review that for all its vivid realism and razzle dazzle, Blitz may not have the subtlety of McQueen's best work. But for its panoramic, bravura portrait of the city (and England) under the blitz, together with its picture of the population's multi-racial identity often overlooked in WWII narratives, this is an important film, one of the year's best. Recommended, but bring ear plugs and dramamine.
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*Notable examples are Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (2017) and Sam Mendes's 1917 (2019). Robbie Collin of The Telegraph says Blitz has a "scale and depth" that "hasn't been seen since Dunkirk." McQueen in Blitz focuses exclusively on the civilian receiving end of war, a viewpoint we get too seldom.

Blitz, 120 mins., premiered at BFI London Oct. 9, 2024, US debut as the closing night film at the NYFF, where it was screened for this review. It will open in US and UK. theaters Nov. 1, 2024, followed by a streaming release on Apple TV+ Nov. 22,. Metacritic rating: 76%.

NYFF showtimes:
Closing Night · North American Premiere · Steve McQueen, Saoirse Ronan, and Elliott Heffernan in person at Oct. 10 screenings at Alice Tully Hall
Q&A with Steve McQueen, Saoirse Ronan, and Elliott Heffernan on Oct. 10 at 6pm screening at Alice Tully Hall.
Introduction by Steve McQueen, Saoirse Ronan, and Elliott Heffernan on Oct. 10 at 9pm screening at Alice Tully Hall.


ELIOTT HEFFERMANN AND SAORISE RONAN IN BLITZ

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.