Steve McQueen's messily truncated Blitz still has its moving virtues

Arduousness defined director Steve McQueen's earliest works. Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave, this was a spiritual trilogy of films about deeply tormented humans isolated from the larger world in ways ranging from enslavement to sex addiction to imprisonment. Since Slave became an awards darling, McQueen's shifted his creative tempo a bit. Brutal reflections on reality haven't suddenly evaporated from his filmmaking exploits. However, he has used his camera to capture lighter sides of humanity. The forced comradery underpinning Widows or the sensual bonds underpinning the transfixing Lovers Rock, for instance. His 2023 documentary epic Occupied City, meanwhile, focused on over four hours of footage chronicling everyday life in modern Amsterdam.

His command behind the camera hasn’t shifted. The visual gusto informing Hunger is very much tangible within the gripping crime drama of the tragically underrated Widows. However, just as he earlier shifted from working in art galleries to directing feature-length narrative movies, McQueen clearly doesn’t want to remain in one place as a filmmaker. Just look at his detour into avant-garde documentary cinema last year! Now this filmmaker has shifted gears once again to deliver period piece epic Blitz. Like his 2020 Small Axe feature Education, McQueen tells Blitz largely through the eyes of a child experiencing hardship ingrained into the adult world.

This director’s gift for rendering deeply moving portraits of human connection informs Blitz’s most affecting moments. Early scenes establishing the home life of George (Elliot Heffernan), his mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan), and grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller) are so tenderly executed. Watching the trio playing the piano together and singing, while trickles of soft sunlight creep in through a nearby window, instantly led to tears welling up in my eyes. These are not people with a lot or anything remotely approaching secure finances. However, they have each other. In just a few minutes of screentime, McQueen’s intimate gaze sells a loving household.

That domain is, unfortunately, in great peril. Blitz takes place in 1940 London during The Blitz. This series of German bombs turned a bustling city into a landscape littered with craters and shattered homes. During these horrors, the government advises parents to send their children away on a train. This initiative will see youngsters taken someplace else safe far away from The Blitz. Rita reluctantly agrees to send George away, a plan this youngster despises. While leaving for his train, George refuses to look his mother in the eye. He even spits out “I hate you” as his final words to her.

While on the train, George takes destiny into his own hands. When nobody’s looking, he leaps off the train and tries to return to Rita. Now, he’s in his own version of Empire of the Son: a young boy, separated from his mother, desperate to go home against a World War II backdrop. In George’s quest to return to familiar surroundings, he encounters various friendly and hostile faces. These include kindly Officer Ife (Benjamin Clementine) as well as a group of cruel scavengers that includes Albert (Stephen Graham). Rita, meanwhile, grows increasingly determined to get her son back home.

It's no surprise Blitz's best moments are also its smallest in scope. Quiet conversations between Rita and George exude a deeply believable sense of reality. Ife and George quietly talking while checking on people in London similarly thrives. The latter sequence is especially fascinating since it directly follows George wandering around a store littered with racist Black caricatures. Surrounded by these hideous drawings and constant racial jeering from his peers, it’s no wonder this child (whose father was Black) initially tells Ife “I’m not Black.” McQueen takes the time to slow Blitz down and just let George stroll the London streets with Ife. Here, this youngster develops a bond with a man that paints another non-stigmatizing portrait of Black existence.

His ethnicity is no longer just tied to racist taunts and images. It’s also connected to a kindly individual who was there for George when he needed him most.

However, Blitz struggles whenever its scope expands. Part of the issue is cramming a movie with David Lean and Stanley Kubrick ambitions into a runtime barely reaching two hours with credits. Old-school epics needed extensive lengths not to justify costly roadshow tour ticket prices, but to take audiences on grand journeys. After three or more hours, you feel like you’ve truly watched entire lives play out before your eyes. Here, Blitz’s compressed length truncates the emotional impact George’s various exploits. The innately episodic nature of his journey home is especially inescapable when his assorted encounters don’t have room to breathe.

Supporting players like Albert and his crook gang struggle to register as anything more than broad caricatures in their minimal screentime. It’s also difficult to grasp a sense of constant danger for George within Blitz’s streamlined narrative structure. As soon as it looks like the end is near for our adolescent protagonist, McQueen’s script jostles him off to another corner of London society impacted by the bombings. Actors like Harris Dickinson, Erin Kellyman, and Kathy Burke, meanwhile, have puzzlingly little to do in their truncated screentime. An extra hour in Blitz could’ve really fleshed out the tension and characters.

It's also a shame that Blitz doesn’t have more pomp and circumstance in its visuals or music. Most of Roick Le Saux's cinematography is serviceable, but rarely as grandiose or idiosyncratic as it could be. Even more disappointing is Hans Zimmer's score. This composer only really comes alive in two scenes showing George heading into dark unknown terrains (specifically, a bombed-out jewelry store and an underground train tunnel). For these sequences, Zimmer conjures up compositions relying on atonal sounds (the clicking of a timer, for example) and music cues. These sonically reinforce George venturing into frightening uncertainty. These tracks are impactful. They offer a vivid window into this child’s mind. Best of all, they don’t sound like what you’d expect from a World War II drama.

Unfortunately, his other compositions are deeply phoned-in creations rarely bursting with much identity. Given Zimmer's terrific work on the scores for prior McQueen movies 12 Years a Slave and Widows, it's a shame their collaboration here didn’t yield more compelling material. Unfortunately, Zimmer’s score embodies the perfunctory but not especially memorable quality informing several key aspects of Blitz. In the movies more intimate sequences, the compelling performances and loving camerawork make these flaws negligible. Unfortunately, when McQueen relies on imposing visual-oriented spectacle to solidify The Blitz’s horrors, these shortcomings become more damning.

Blitz undeniably leaves some serious potential on the table, including in McQueen eschewing the careful framing of Hunger in favor of a more conventional shooting style. However, when the camera lingers on just folks like George or Rita enduring in the face of the unthinkable, Blitz really comes alive. Playing Rita, the always reliable Saoirse Ronan imbues every inch of her performance with rich humanity and compassion. Just the way Ronan walks as Rita (burdened with emotional trauma yet still fiercely moving forward) against the crumbling ruins of London streets is a tremendously impactful sight. Blitz is a messy creation working best as a close-up portrait than as an expansive canvas. To say the least, it’s nowhere near the best movie Steve McQueen has made (Widows and Lovers Rock forever). But just Blitz’s most moving scenes of George and Rita’s domestic life alone crystallize this man’s filmmaking dexterity and talent.