Blitz

It's a story of a young biracial boy and his mother during the German Blitz of London over several days in late 1940. Rita (Saoirse Ronan) is a working-class single mom working in a munitions factory who lives with her musician father, Gerald (Paul Weller), and nine-year-old son, George (Elliott Heffernan). After the Blitz begins, Rita sends George together with a group of children on a train to the safer countryside. George is resistant, partly because of the racism he has faced in the past. He escapes from the train about an hour out of London and tries to return to his home.

The film follows George's spectacular adventures, both positive and negative, over the next several days and Rita's desperation when she learns that George is missing. A flashback to around 1930 briefly introduces George's father, Marcus (CJ Beckford).

"Blitz" features some great acting by Ronan and Heffernan. However, the script and the cinematography are overwrought and unbelievable. Computer-generated imagery makes it seem like half of London is aflame in three days. The script contains many partial stories with inadequate context and resolution. Style is featured more than content, which is a rotten shame, given the quality of the acting.

Visually striking (costumes, sets, not too much CGI...) and with a great cast who do a wonderful job with the parts they play. I loved the shots of the women working in the factory!

What I'm struggling with is that it feels like it's not sure if it's about a boy trying to find his way home and encounters lots of obstacles along the way... or the impact of racism in London in the 1930s/1940s. I think both would have been excellent and interesting movies but what we end up with is something that feels both too much and too little.

I personally would have loved it if it focused entirely on George and, in trying to find his way home, he learns to more about himself and his heritage. We get some of that, but they're more like side quests that are cut short. I would have liked more Ife! What a sweetheart.

He experiences so much trauma, much of which takes the viewer by surprise, but we don't really see how that shapes him.

There are bunch of points that are clearly supposed to be tear jerkers but they just don't quite land for me.

The score was also pretty wild. Like an experimental horror film. War = horror?

I suppose one could argue that there's no satisfying end in war times.

Apple really wants to give money to Oscar winning directors to bolster its own credentials. The problem is that Steve McQueen isn't nearly as good as everyone insists he is. His output is wildly inconsistent. This one falls somewhere in the middle.

It looks pretty decent - of course most shots are very tight to disguise the difficulty of dressing the city to look old without millions of pounds. The CG is fairly good when they do go wider.

The story is paper thin and at two hours it really drags in the middle, you could cut 20 minutes and it would be a lot better. Of course he shoehorns in a lot of stuff about racism as he tends to, like Spike Lee he can't leave it alone even when it's not really the point of the story. It doesn't detract from the film but it doesn't add much either.

Ultimately though it feels like this is a film he made because Apple wanted to give him the money, it doesn't really have anything to say and certainly nothing new.

With the Nazi bombs raining down around them, single mum "Rita" (Saoirse Ronan) has to take the difficult decision to evacuate her son "George" (Elliott Heffernan) from the London home they share with her father (Paul Weller). He isn't keen and so jumps from the moving train and tries to make it back home through a city populated by some kindly people and some Dickensian-style villains - and he encounters them both. Meantime, his mum is told of his absconding and as she tries to hold down he job in a munitions factory she must try to track him down. I thought Heffernan delivered really quite engagingly here, as did the rather menacing Kathy Burke with her brief appearances, but the film has a curious sterility to it. We know it's set amidst the random brutality of war, and the narration points out to us that that didn't all come from the skies above with racial prejudice never far from the surface, but it never looks or feels real. Clearly, Apple threw some money at it but the characters are all just too undercooked and there's an inevitability to the story that seems more about convenience than authenticity as it neuters the visceral humanity of the story. That last element isn't helped by a Ronan who seems very much to be going through the motions turning in an adequate enough performance but not one that wasn't being turned in on studio-based television dramas thirty years ago. Dickinson barely features and though it's all perfectly watchable, it's not really very memorable save for a young actor who gives us a knee-high view of man's venality and inhumanity.

The Blitz and its societal impact absolutely warrant a high budget film. And at times this film delivers. There are great action shots of night raids and bombings. Some scenes get across the tension and fear of the time really well and one tragedy (based on true events) is done extremely well.

The problem is only half the film is actually about the Blitz. The other half of the time is spent blatantly and unnaturally shoehorning issues of race and racism. It actually gets so ridiculous that it completely destroys any immersion.

If your only exposure to the Blitz was this film you would go away thinking that ethnic tensions were just as significant an issue in London in 1940 as the bombs raining down from the sky.

The director clearly wanted to make a film about racism which is absolutely fine and he has already done so expertly in the amazing 12 Years A Slave. But he should not have commandeered the Blitz as a subject for this purpose. It is silly at best and disrespectful at worst and makes for a thoroughly confused and directionless film.

On top of that the storyline itself is pretty repetitive with many aspects and characters not fully fleshed out. There is basically zero character growth which would be fine if the main purpose of the film was showcasing a snapshot of Blitz London, but as I've said it doesn't even do that justice.

I hope this film existing doesn't dissuade someone else for giving a Blitz film a go - WW2 is highly covered in media but this film does little more to shine a light on the as yet underserved topic of the Blitz.