‘Blitz’ Review: A Solid Saoirse Ronan but Steve McQueen’s WWII Story Feels Too Tidy | London Film Festival

Anyone who has grown up in Britain will be intimately familiar with the narrative of the country’s enduring spirit in the Second World War. All throughout school, children were fed with ideas that the great British people bravely maintained a united front: women took up the jobs left unoccupied by the men who were drafted to war, families were encouraged to grow vegetables in their “victory gardens,” over a million people — mostly children — were evacuated from vulnerable towns and cities. Perhaps the most enduring image is of Londoners taking shelter in underground stations during Germany’s air raid campaign, known as the Blitz. There was a sense of community, of neighbors and strangers defending and protecting each other against hellfire. For all of the horror and destruction, there’s a curiously rosy-hued view of wartime Britain. There’s nothing like the good ol’ days, they say. 

Steve McQueen’s Blitz offers a refreshing counterpoint to the nostalgia. Yes, perhaps community existed, but it wasn’t all unconditional acceptance. You can see it in the white couple who attempt to segregate the air raid shelter with sheets pinned up with clothes pegs, the people who cruelly dismiss the Black volunteers trying to save them, and the racism passed down from parent to child. So much for the Allies. For those watching who have grown up learning about its titular attacks, the film feels in direct conversation with the whitewashed stories of hope and unity that have trickled down from word-of-mouth to cinema screens and classrooms.

McQueen depicts these contradictions predominantly through the eyes of George (Elliott Heffernan) a 9-year-old from London’s Stepney Green who lives under the care of his doting mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan). When the bombing begins to hit too close to home, Rita tearfully sends George off on the next train out of the city. But George soon abandons the evacuation and makes his way back to London, encountering individuals who reinforce and dispel the myth of a united population. The winding structure allows room for some enthralling character actors — particularly Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke as a pair of sniveling jewelry robbers — but little space for George. Newcomer Heffernan, making his screen debut here, is wonderful, portraying both an innocence and awareness of everyday discrimination in a way that never feels contradictory. But by the end of his character’s journey, George hasn’t grown so much as he has been thrown from one end of the capital to the other. 

Similarly, the characters that occupy Blitz are more akin to archetypes than real people: the good samaritan, the tragic friend. More often than not, the people that George meets hide some ulterior motive, which only gets repetitive to the point where you can predict the moments they turn on him. Rita offers a somewhat sunnier perspective, as she works in the munitions factory in Rosie the Riveter garb by day and volunteers at a hospitable air raid shelter by night. Again, McQueen stages that disconnect between the nostalgic memories of war and the darker reality, as Rita and her fellow workers exchange light small-talk over the weapons of destruction under their care. And when a BBC radio broadcasting team stops by the factory, the women take a hold of the microphone to advocate for opening tube stations as bomb shelters. The working class individuals who aided the war effort are heralded today as heroes, but Blitz highlights how communities were treated as disposable tools left vulnerable to the bombs falling from above. 

Ronan is as reliably brilliant as ever, maintaining a steely resolve that eventually cracks under the pressure. But her role as a desperate mother with an East London edge operates as little more than another audience proxy observing and absorbing the chaos around her.. Harris Dickinson, who has so often imbued his characters with a dignified charm, is equally as wasted here: his part as a local firefighter must’ve been a victim of the cutting room floor. 

For the millions who endured the Blitz, their experience of the bombing was indirect, felt through the shaking walls, booming explosions heard above and a tangible fear shared by everyone. McQueen wisely keeps the action sparse, instead focusing on the human side of war, but there are some astounding set-pieces, including a single-take sequence that sees George run through London’s make-shift battlefield as planes crash and fire rains down. Yorick Le Saux’s handsome cinematography maintains that intimacy, staying at George’s level as he almost drowns in the frantic crowds of towering bodies. Nevertheless, Blitz still unfortunately looks like a film made for Apple TV+, glossy and flat in a way that doesn’t feel true to the city setting. When desperate locals take shelter for the night on underground train tracks, it all looks a little too clean.

As a defiant challenge against the patriotism that the Blitz inspired, McQueen’s film is a compelling account of an antagonistic Britain. What happened inside the shelters was just as pernicious and dangerous as the carnage that transpired outside. It’s unfortunate that what makes Blitz so fascinating has been stuffed in a fairly standard war film, well-made but leaving you wishing for something more substantial. London is populated with countless stories, but Blitz feels especially crowded in trying to do justice to them all.

Grade: B-

This review is from the 2024 BFI London Film Festival. Blitz will be released in theaters on November 1, 2024 and available to stream November 22 on AppleTV+