Blitz (2024): Hope in a Hellish Situation

    by Len Weiler

Blitz was an intense bombing campaign by the Nazi Luftwaffe over roughly seven months between early September 1940 and mid-May 1941. Although industrial plants and port facilities were targeted, the majority of bombs were dropped indiscriminately on civilian areas most particularly in London, the British capital. More than a million houses were destroyed or damaged there, and tens of thousands were killed. It was not only deadly and destructive, but terrifying – particularly as the majority of bombing raids were conducted at night. The aim of these attacks was to demoralize the British people and their will to resist, hopefully taking the U.K. out of the war. This it failed to do. 

Far from cowing the Brits into submission and surrender, The Blitz accomplished the opposite: it inspired a widely felt, resolute attitude of perseverance and resistance. Broadly speaking this is what the new film Blitz is about. It’s not literally a true story, but it truthfully shows what living through the Blitz was like: how the lives of ordinary people in London were affected by the bombing, what it felt like for them, how they coped with the fear, the devastation and the uncertainty. Even without hearing Churchill’s powerful, patriotic speeches about defending to the death their native soil, fighting on the beaches, in the fields and the hills, in the streets, and never surrendering – we can see and feel the indomitable heart, fortitude and spirit of a people united. 

Blitz is a big budget production, with no scrimping on its depiction of the scope and horror of the bombings and the awful destruction it wrought; reproducing the scenes of thousands of citizens sheltering overnight every night on the platforms and even on the tracks of London’s deep Tube stations to escape the bombings; while also portraying the remarkable wartime camaraderie with which so many besieged Londoners endured what became their finest hour.

The picture works by focusing on a few characters with which we viewers can relate. The big-name star of Blitz is Saoirse Ronan, whose other 2024 film, The Outrun, is currently in theaters. See my recent review of that film HERE. In Blitz, Ronan plays Rita, a young mother of a 9-year-old son, George [Elliot Heffernan]. Rita and George live in London with Rita’s father/George’s grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller – the rock star singer-songwriter-musician). To protect her son from the manifest dangers of the Blitz, Rita – like hundreds of thousands of other parents of young children – reluctantly decides, over George’s strenuous objections, to send him off to the countryside under the evacuation program known as Operation Pied Piper. 

Their parting at a train station is strained, to say the least, with George outspokenly expressing his anger, as he runs away from her. Taunted by some other boys on the train because of his mixed heritage, he decides to jump ship and head back home, which – when the train slows down a bit – is just what he does. And just like that, we have a split narrative – one about Rita’s life in London under the Blitz, and one about George’s attempt to find his way back to London and his family. 

Rita’s experience is a mixed bag, reflecting how young folks coped with the war generally –  working at the factory, drinking and dancing (and even singing) at various waterholes in the evening, huddling in makeshift shelters during bombing raids, helping, if she can, at bombsites afterwards. Trying to keep her chin up … until she learns that her son did not arrive at his rural destination, having apparently jumped off the train along the way. Now she is frantic with worry and spends all her free time searching for him.       

Initially, young George does the most sensible thing. Knowing no other way to find his way back into London, he just follows the train track back the way it came. While the train had not travelled all that far by the time he chose to leave it, but it is already a completely unknown rural landscape he must initially navigate. In his favor, George is enterprising. Along the way, he meets several adults who offer assistance, the problem being that some turn out to be Dickensian characters, interested only in using him to help themselves – think Fagin’s evil gang in Oliver Twist - while, luckily, others really do want to help – among them the ARP officer Ife (Benjamin Clémentine). George’s journey home is by far the more compelling of the two strands of narrative. It’s like a well-done child’s adventure story. In fact, that’s just what it is, helped considerably by 11-year old Heffernan’s terrific debut performance. 

As Rita, Ronan does the best she can, but she has the tougher job. Although Rita serves as our guide to how Londoners are faring through the Blitz, Ronan is given neither the time nor the dramatic opportunity to really fill in her character.  Even Rita’s final scene of the film, which should have been especially evocative, comes across a bit flat and too rushed to properly register – as if Blitz had a two-hour time limit and the director, Steve McQueen, was afraid he’d run over.  (In fact, the stated run-time of the film is exactly 120 minutes.)

Nonetheless, Ronan's performance is solid and heartfelt, and so is the film itself.  One gets the sense that McQueen was aiming to make something great, however, and in that sense Blitz falls a little short. The individual stories are not uninteresting – my interest in the proceedings never waned as I was watching - but they’re not as fascinating or as compelling as they sought to be or ought to be.   

Blitz is McQueen’s sixth feature film, the first five being Hunger (2008) about IRA activist/martyr Bobby Sands, starring Michael Fassbender; Shame (2011) about a sex-addicted young man (Fassbender again), whose life tilts when his wayward sister (Carey Mulligan) decides to move in; 12 Years A Slave (2013) an adaptation of the slave narrative [memoir] by Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York who was abducted and sold into slavery – nominated for nine Oscars and winner of three including Best Picture of the Year; Widows (2018) a revenge film about a heist, starring Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez Elizabeth Debecki, Cynthia Erivo, and Liam Neeson; and Occupied City (2023), an epic documentary about the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam in WW2 and the manifestation of the holocaust there. Then there is the award-winning anthology, Small Axe (2020), an anthology of five films – seven hours all-told – reflecting the real-life experiences of people in London’s West Indian community between 1969 and 1982. [Read my 2021 review.] All of these projects were well received critically, and all were profitable.

My point is that McQueen is an accomplished director, arguably a great one, with a remarkably varied filmography. It's almost always worthwhile to watch movies by good directors, and such is the case here. While Blitz may not be McQueen's absolute best movie, it is a darned good one and has plenty to offer: high production values, fascinating history, adventure, heroism, and solid entertainment. 

2 hours                                                    Rated PG-13 

Grade: B+

In theaters beginning Friday November 1, 2024. Streaming release date: November 22 on Apple TV+.