Danielle Solzman
One year after Occupied City, Steve McQueen is back with a World War II narrative feature, Blitz, focused on the London Blitz in 1940-41.
As a filmmaker, Steve McQueen has been on a roll. To say that he does it again with Blitz is not an understatement. In many ways, it works as a complementary companion to Masters of the Air, which aired on Apple TV+ in early 2024. While the latter series takes place a few years into the war, the film focuses in on fall 1940 as Germans are bombing all over the United Kingdom but London in particular. Londoners have a relation to the Blitz that is still being passed down to the current generation. In fact, McQueen has wanted to make this film for a few decades now but it wasn’t until working on Small Axe that he found his way into the story. Who could ever predict that one photo would make a difference?
The film is less about the London Blitz as a hole in as much as it is about a mother and son, Rita Hanway (Saoirse Ronan) and George Hanway (Elliott Hefferman), and their love for each other. The family makes a brief run to the makeshift Stepney Green tube station shelter early in the film. It’s not an official shelter but Londoners force their way into safety. George protests his evacuation from London, preferring to stay with Rita and his grandfather, Gerald Hanway (Paul Weller). As such, he jumps off the train and never makes it to the English countryside. The news eventually reaches Rita at the munitions factory. Not surprisingly, she immediately goes into a maternal mode of wanting to find George. Between Rita and George, we see how the Blitz is impacting others in war-torn London in the early 1940s.
McQueen and company are rather impressive in their efforts to recreate the scope of the damage. At one point, we see a London Underground shelter flooding. This actually happened in real life when the Balham underground station flooded after a bus crashed into a water main. The film recreates the Café de Paris and its subsequent explosion from a 1941 bombing, which killed musician/dancer Ken “Snakehips” Johnson (Devon McKenzie-Smith) among many others. McQueen and production designer Adam Stockhausen craft scenes from images as they bring them back to life. Unfortunately, the production budget prevented them from actually filming in London. Instead, they opt for filming on location in Hull, Chatham, and a soundstage. Hull Paragon Station in East Yorkshire stands in for London’s Paddington Station, where evacuees boarded the train.
Perhaps the most interesting choice in recreating the Blitz is the decision to not show as many explosions. Obviously, there are some wide shots showing the extent of the damage with smoke and such. It’s not a case of hearing sirens and then seeing all the bombings as they happen. That would just be too much–the film alludes to explosions when we don’t actively see them, of course. There is an opening sequence with fire–they don’t use CGI, opting to film at the Chatham Dockyard. Later on, there’s another explosion when George is running away from London Bridge and into a shelter.
Much like his work on The Last Days, Hans Zimmer was born to compose this film. Zimmer’s mother had been born in Germany and later evacuated to London–Mayfair in particular–during the Holocaust. According to the film’s production notes, Zimmer crafts a store in which audiences will “feel the same terror, disorientation and helplessness that a child would.” His goal was to compose “the most provocative and unsettlingly, lonely and dissonant music to remind the adults of their own childhood terrors of the unfathomable and uncontrollable world around them.” On that note, I’d say that Zimmer did the job. His Dune 2 score might be ineligible for the Oscars but Blitz is a contender. While Zimmer handles scoring duties, Nicholas Britell and Taura Stinson handle the on-screen music. “Brighter Days,” “Before We Go,” and “Winter Coat” are originals. “Winter Coat” is an Oscar-worthy tune.
Because of its focus, Blitz is such a different World War II film from the many films that have come before. There’s plenty of room for this Steve McQueen’s WWII narrative feature to exist alongside Steven Spielberg-Tom-Hanks-Gary Goetzman productions and then some.
DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER: Steve McQueen
CAST: Saoirse Ronan, introducing Elliott Heffernan, Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clementine, Kathy Burke, Paul Weller, Stephen Graham, Leigh Gill, Mica Ricketts, CJ Beckford, Alex Jennings, Joshua McGuire, Hayley Squires, Erin Kellyman, Sally Messham
Apple released Blitz in theaters on November 1, 2024 and will start streaming globally on November 22 on Apple TV+. Grade: 4.5/5
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