Director – Steve McQueen – 2024 – UK, US – Cert. 12a – 120m
*****
As the Germans bomb London in WW2’s Blitz, a boy evacuated by his mother as per government instructions refuses to stay on the train and finds his way back to London – from the BFI London Film Festival 2024 which runs from Wednesday, October 9th to Sunday, October 20th in cinemas and on BFI Player and then out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 1st
(This review is a piece of writing currently in progress. Please bookmark and return to this page to see the whole review in due course.)
A five-star review (and I’m unrepentant) for a film that’s less than perfect. It gets the five stars because of the incredible things it gets right.
Blitz promises two things: one, an immersive experience of the London Blitz, and two, the mother and son story of a woman sending her son out of London in the mass child evacuation and the child’s refusal to follow the plan, complicated with the racial tension of the child’s having a black father (who is absent) and a white mother.
Writing these lines, the film’s potential problem is evident; the immersive experience is probably a movie in itself, and this side of things is brilliantly realised without the need for narrative coherence. The evacuation / racism drama – which could perhaps have been a film in McQueen’s excellent five standalone BBC drama films which comprise his groundbreaking Small Axe (TV series, 2020) were it not for the commendable desire to portray the Blitz as an absorbing, big screen environment – is considerably more convoluted, perhaps even working against the immersive, spectacular side of things.
With Saorise Ronan, Paul Weller (yes, the musician).
Blitz plays in the BFI London Film Festival 2024 which runs from Wednesday, October 9th to Sunday, October 20th in cinemas and on BFI Player prior to its release in UK cinemas on Friday, November 1st.
[Read my shorter review at Reform magazine.]
Trailer: