Blitz opened the 2024 BFI London Film Festival. Here's our review..
. A more mainstream offering than we might expect from Steve McQueen ( Shame , 12 Years a Slave ), Blitz pinpoints intimate tales of Londoners during the bombings of World War Two, occasionally pulling back (literally, the camera reversing skywards in scenes recalling Gone with the Wind) to reveal the awful scale of it all. Highlighting the best and worst of humanity with a detailed sweep that is, at times, positively Spielbergian, this gorgeously crafted but frequently intense and horrific drama will invite comparisons to Empire of the Sun (1987) – not least because much of the action is viewed through the eyes of a young boy.
Set in 1940, it sees munitions worker Rita (a customarily excellent Saoirse Ronan) packs George (strong newcomer Elliott Heffernan) off to the peaceful countryside on a train full of kids, only for him to jump to freedom and embark on an odyssey back to Stepney Green. His episodic adventures (there’s a hint of ‘boy’s own’ excitement, without ever trivialising the trauma) are intercut with Rita’s grief, day-to-day survival and search for her son after she learns of his disappearance Exquisitely lensed in a muted palette with suffused lighting and a soft-focus sheen (especially the pastoral scenes) that’s rudely shattered by some devastatingly immediate set-pieces, Blitz feels like a gloriously old-fashioned epic shot through a modern lens. McQueen potently handles themes of.