'BLITZ' REVIEW: Steve McQueen Is So Back [3.5/5]
An Emotionally Potent Writer-Director at the Height of His Talents
[Rating 3.5/5] - dir. Steve McQueen - 2024 - United Kingdom - PG-13 - 2h - Historical Drama / Adventure
We are lucky to have writer-director Steve McQueen.
He is so touching in his evocations of family and life. No matter what story he takes on, big or small, he imbues it with so much truth and depth.
Blitz gets its name from the World War II German war tactic of blitzkrieg, in which you shock the victim with an outright, all-guns-blazing attack from the word “go” — or even before it.
This method of surprise attack served the Nazis so well, they made it all the way to the edges of continental Europe. With the right kind of imaginative sight, they could see England, shrouded in fog, one of the great centers of the Western world.
And so begins our story.
The scarily talented Irish actress Saoirse Ronan portrays “Rita”, the mother of “George” (Elliott Heffernan), her half Grenadian son, on the run from German bombs raining on London, headed first together into the London Underground and later separately out towards the quiet hills of the English countryside and the bowels of city factories and shelters.
Instead of being a traditional World War II historical drama, which would take advantage of violence and battles which successively increase in scale, McQueen uses Blitz to explore 1. The socio-economic climate of the time, 2. A mother-son relationship, and 3. Casually brutal racism and bullying between kids. Dynamic swings happen in tandem with human emotion, not with body counts.
How did a single mother and her biracial son survive not just German attacks but also the pitfalls of a society, paranoid and paralyzed by fear, that not only undervalued them but actively hated them?
I reviewed Ronan’s other 2024 movie, The Outrun, and found it to be a relatively fruitless exercise in subgenre, even if she was typically great. The worst you can say about Blitz is some of its setpieces look like exact adaptations of WWII propaganda posters — there is a cleanliness and an earnestness that undermine the well-represented danger of half-destroyed London; sometimes the supporting child actors are stilted in their delivery; the dialogue could be much subtler.
Ultimately, however, this is on another level for Ronan and co.
McQueen is a writer-director with confidence, the talent to match it, and the taste to pick the right collaborators.
Two standout examples: 1. Hans Zimmer has created an immensely stirring score, one part bomb-like siren strings, and one part melancholy, whole, soulful, grounded piano. When they don’t herald the incoming of fresh bombs, they serve as their reminder. 2. Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux sets the uneasy tone in a fresh visual way — no easy feat after decades of Hollywood mining World War II and its iconic imagery.
We are lucky to have Steve McQueen.
—
‘Blitz’ is streaming on Apple+ now.
Selected Movie Quote: “All mouth and no trousers.”
[Rating 3.5/5] - dir. Steve McQueen - 2024 - United Kingdom - PG-13 - 2h - Historical Drama / Adventure