Directed By Steve McQueen

Starring – Saorise Ronan, Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clementine

The Plot – Follows the epic journey of George (Elliott Heffernan), a 9-year-old boy in World War II London whose mother Rita (Ronan) sends him to safety in the English countryside. George, defiant and determined to return home to his mom and his grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller) in East London, embarks on an adventure, only to find himself in immense peril, while a distraught Rita searches for her missing son.

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements including some racism, violence, some strong adult language, brief sexuality and smoking.

Blitz — Official Trailer | Apple TV+ (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

Though ‘Blitz’ is a war film, it’s not necessarily one as dependent on wartime brutality, instead focusing on the trials and tribulations that war has towards crippling an economy, all the while unearthing some hard-hitting observations about society when that encompassing safety net of routine and order no longer keeps us civilized. Not since films like ‘Threads’ or ‘The Day After’ has war been depicted with the kind of gravely hopelessness that makes resolution a pipe dream in the minds of the audience, but McQueen is a fearless director who revels in the confines of uncomfortable atmospheres and dire situations, and as a result effortlessly illustrates how war is especially no place for a child, with this long-distance journey to rescue and resolution coming at the cost of this little boy having to experience some unsettling truths pertaining to racism and cultural divide that existed long before the Nazi’s went airborne. In experiencing these things from a child’s perspective, they feel all the more tragic and unforgiving, with certain stranger interactions steered by a moral ambiguity that McQueen constructs so seamlessly from a child’s interpretation, proving that in life there are just as many bad people as there are good. In terms of the mother and son relationship at the center of the film’s heart, the narrative periodically flashes back to memories of building bond between them that appraises value where a lack of togetherness in the current day narrative can’t, and through these smoothly orchestrated transitions that don’t distract or detract away from what’s persisting at the forefront, the sequences showcase how each of these people are the key towards making the other one whole in their respective lives, garnering a hearty humbling that you’ll rarely find anywhere else throughout the engagement. But McQueen’s writing definitely pales in comparison to his direction, which is once again riveting and faithful towards fleshing the look and feel of England during the devastation that unfortunately defined 1940. McQueen’s biggest scope and scale towards a film allows him freedom of expression to illustrate the crumbling ruins of this small village facing so much of a vitriolic onslaught of airborne bombing, with sporadic action sequences that breed the kind of blanketing intensity involving meaningful production values that immerse audiences in the drama and despair of war’s unsatisfied toll. The sound mixing and editing are award-worthy, in terms of detection that they muster, without visual coherence to detect, and with the rhythmic impulses of the great Hans Zimmer eliciting another supercharged score whose instrumentals correspond with rumbling firepower or mechanical machinery transpiring on-screen, giving the sound schemes a far more absorbing originality that allows these sequences to stand out with enhanced urgency and vulnerability. Likewise, McQueen and cinematographer Yorick Le Saux prove themselves to be a formidable team to the movie’s benefit, with smoothly stirring visual impulses behind the lens that document these scenes in ways that are far more immersive and resonating with the hands-on physicality that McQueen has always steered alongside his actors. While nothing as radiantly dazzling as his work in ’12 Years a Slave’ or ‘Shame’, the decision to implant these various long takes, throughout scenes of physical conflict, only serve to further maximize the aforementioned intensity factors that envelope these sequences, with relaxed editing offering nothing in the way of editing to appraise levity towards breathing for the audience. Combine this with the clever placements of the camera to garner a deeper psychological significance to certain scene framing, and you have a visionary auteur who maximizes artistic merit in even the most ugly settings, proving why McQueen deserves mentioned among the more captivating directors of this or any generation, for atmospheres that have no reservations about stealing your breath. Lastly, it’s to be expected that Saorise Ronan would brandish another emotion-heavy performance, as her resume for heavyweight dramatic delivery speaks for itself, but her work as Rita inspires certain unforeseen talents that somehow extend her range even further than before, helping to bring to life the specificities of this character that go a long way towards realizing an effortlessly empathetic value. Commanding a faithfully thick and persistent English accent to the portrayal, Ronan delivers on all scenes involving fear, remorse, and even anger that consume her demeanor, and though she’s impressively endearing and believable towards all of them, her singing during a personal flashback is most impressive, leaving me hoping that Ronan will be cast for a musical at some point, for tender tones that tickled my ears. Ronan is joined by first time actor Elliot Heffernan, and for a rookie, what he’s asked to do in a majority of the film’s focus is truly remarkable, embracing the tenderness and resiliency of a kid, but never in ways that feel precociously compromising towards the integrity of his portrayal. Heffernan’s best scenes are those quietly reserved moments, where a look surmises so much shock and sadness to the way his character views these darkly depraved corners of the world, solidifying an inevitable future in this industry that began with a role where he goes toe to toe with Saorise Ronan.

NEGATIVES

In McQueen being one of my five favorite directors, it pains me tremendously to assess that ‘Blitz’ is his weakest film to date, despite an enhanced scale and story that pertains to humanity in ways that his films typically render. The problems definitely lend themselves to the inconsistencies within the script, with a barrage of characters and corresponding arcs, to which not even half of them are paid off satisfyingly. While I could easily look at a throwaway hinted romance between Ronan and Dickinson’s characters, or George’s run in with a black war officer that goes nowhere, I will instead focus on the film’s inability to use racism in a way that is original or naturally throughout the engagement, resulting in these heavily forced line deliveries in dialogue that feel like they come out of nowhere from characters without a primary focus towards the film. While I definitely understand racism’s appeal in this particular story, meant to vividly paint the inequalities between cultures that existed long before war, it’s explored at the kind of sitcom surface level that doesn’t elicit anything endearing or rewarding from the inclusion, and as a result a bloated two hour run time, with so many various subplots, continuously takes away focus and momentum from the depths of the mother/son dynamic, in which it never felt to me like it reached the kind of emotional undertowing that paid off in an ending that I had my own problems with. I’ll refrain from an in-depth discussion for spoilers, and instead just say that a big reveal during the ending doesn’t feel believable to me, and far too safe feeling to be faithful to the environment that it was erected from. I can understand the intention to be crowd-pleasing, but considering the subject matter it feel counterproductive to where it stemmed from, and a far more honest and challenging resolution would’ve packed a far louder message to the film’s closing moments. Finally, the film is a bit of a tonal mess between many of the aforementioned subplots introduced to the proceedings, with too much humor during the film’s first half that took away some of the steam and momentum from the dramatic intensity. McQueen obviously rights this wrong with scintillating scenes of devastative destruction, but far too often there’s dialogue and deliveries that feel lifted from an entirely different film all together, resulting in frenetic tonal shifts that exhaust the material long before the run time has a chance to.

OVERALL
‘Blitz’ reach of the material far exceeds its grasp but is still a highly entertaining and riveting anti-war drama that is impeccably crafted by a master auteur unloading automatic rounds of heart and intensity into the bleedingly spellbinding canvas. Saorise Ronan turns in another resilient performance that answers how far a mother will go to protect her child, and McQueen’s confidence in focus away from the fields of war inspires a far greater significance to the loss of innocent lives that makes this a cautionary tale of events we’re liable to experience once more, if peace is overlooked.

My Grade: 7/10 or B-