Chicago International Film Festival 2024: 'Blitz'
There’s sentiment. And there’s sentimental. The definitions aren’t the same; more than that, the connotations vary wildly. Blitz has plenty of the former, not so much of the latter, since Steve McQueen’s latest is one of the most unromantic views of the bombing campaign against the British to be put to the big screen.
It’s surprising for not only the central premise, which follows the nine-year-old George (Elliott Heffernan) trying to find his way back to his mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) after he’s sent away to avoid said bombing, it’s that the opportunities for maudlin melodrama are nearly infinite. World War II tends to be the exception to the usual messaging about war, a safe go-to when we want to explore evil, with depictions of heroically united democracies battling the evil fascists.
But Blitz favors retro trappings which are anything but a safe remove. Firemen attempting to put out burning buildings are knocked unconscious by their own hose, civilians push and shove each other on their way to take shelter, working women and the homeless protest unfair conditions, and traumatized, amoral criminals slither in among the dead to rob them of any wealth left behind. Bombs are rarely shown making contact with the ground, but the devastation feels real enough.
The film’s heart is of course the relationship between George and Rita. You can generally count on a single mother and her child to have a tight bond, but she and her father Gerald (Paul Weller) are also a loving shelter from the cruelly casual racism George often experiences as the only Black kid in his working class neighborhood. We can’t agree with George’s decision to jump from the train taking him to safety in the countryside, but we understand it.
Obviously Darkest Hour this is not, with any and all politicians absent in favor of more ordinarily heroic, albeit two-dimensional, characters giving irresistibly cheesy, stirring speeches about the humanity we should show each other. McQueen is one of the most humanist directors working today, so there is beauty in the moments where children laugh on top of a train, and the music, life, and frenetic energy of a jazz-fueled dance floor before the horrors of war put an end to such pulsing rhythms. If only there had been more time to explore this and the other characters who saunter in and out of this world.
Yet what Blitz leaves us with isn’t rosy messages of hope for a vicious time we know had an ending, but what we can cling to in the midst of so much loss. We know these characters will have years to go before they reach the light at the end of the tunnel. If only we had such a guarantee.
Rating: B+
