Blitz is a powerful and somewhat disarming film about the longterm German bombing of London in 1940. One might be forgiven for expecting a kinder, gentler rendition of this horrific event because it’s told through the eyes of a 9-year-old boy. Guess again. Writer-director Steve McQueen spares us nothing in his recreation of the conditions before, during, and after each attack. If anything, they seem even more frightening than any dramatization we’ve seen up until now. It opens with a shot of a firefighter losing control of his hose—a truly scary situation I’ve never witnessed before—and doesn’t let up.
Up till now, the citizens who endured the seemingly endless noise and destruction have displayed quiet bravery and adopted that stiff upper lip for which the Brits are renowned…but according to McQueen this was not always the case. The Londoners we meet are far from stoic, especially when confronted with neighbors and countrymen of a different race or ethnicity. Blitz is not a message movie but it does expose cracks in what is usually portrayed as a solid wall of unity and resistance.
Even knowing that a child’s performance can be patched together from a thousand pieces, young Elliott Heffernan is remarkable. The ability that McQueen and cinematographer Yorick Le Saux have to engineer long, long tracking shots reveal how much they depended on their boy to carry the emotional impact of many key sequences.
He is matched by Saoirse Ronan, as the young single mother whose lover—the boy’s father—was deported, leaving her to raise her mixed-race son at a particularly dodgy time. A factory worker like so many young women of that period, she has done the responsible thing and sent the youngster away from London but he stubbornly refuses to stay on the rescue train and jumps off at his first opportunity, determined to make his way home. His many and varied misadventures make up the rest of the narrative.
It has become difficult, if not impossible, for a civilian like me to determine where a practical set ends and CGI begins. All I know is that Adam Stockhausen is a gifted production designer (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) and the images onscreen are both evocative and persuasive.
Simply put, Blitz is one of the year’s best films.
