BLITZ. The screen acting of children, like their writing, can and often does transcend inexperience with immediacy and truth. Not yet calloused by influence, uninformed by professional habit or tricks or laziness, these performances lie closer to the surface than for most of their adult counterparts and can, given appropriate direction, create something realer and more profound than might be expected of someone without decades of life experience upon which to draw.
That proper direction is the sticking point, of course, as the hubris of adulthood, the gradual refining of focus and loss of wonder generate an artificial distance between the emotions of the world as experienced and the exigencies of telling the story one has envisioned. It’s a bit of a truism, but it is the mark of a truly accomplished director to set aside one’s preconceptions and help a young performer find the way to a whole, honest and coherent screen performance. If we actually think about it, the list of filmmakers who have done it is notably brief.
One of the most vital aspects of the equation is the ability to retain a sense of discovery and wonder in the face of an ever-more cynical enterprise, to hold on to the magic-making possibility inherent in the medium, to embrace it as the amalgam of art, craft and science that it truly is, and then to meet the audience and the performer within that embrace. Sounds a little heady, I know, but Blitz is one of those rare contemporary works that, though grounded in true-life horror and loss and burgeoning hopelessness, encourages hope.
Perhaps in a reaction to the unforgivably minor response to Widows (2018), one of the great movies of the 21st century and a more trenchant examination of race and politics in America than most of our domestic filmmakers have essayed, Steve McQueen has, in the last few years, seemingly regrouped and refocused. His next project Small Axe (2020), a limited series for Amazon, was a gorgeous, sometimes harrowing exploration of Caribbean immigrant life in late mid-20th century London. He followed this with Uprising (2021), a documentary mini-series (again for Amazon) about a series of interconnected traumas in the lives of Black Britons in 1981 and then with the long-form documentary Occupied City (2023), about the enduring effects of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam.
And now, perhaps in a culmination of all that recent work, McQueen has returned with a scripted feature, this time about a family separated by the ugliness of war and institutional racism and sexism.
London, 1940, is under nightly attack from German bombing raids. With most of the male population conscripted to fight, the workforce has become predominantly female. Many of the children of the city have been evacuated to outlying areas. But George (Elliott Heffernan) has been able, so far, to remain home with his mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller). George’s father, whom he never knew, may have been deported after he righteously defended himself against a racist attack we witness in flashback; the reality of the matter remains elusive.
With bombs falling ever closer to home, Rita comes to the impossible decision to send George away to safety. He’s not having it, though, and driven as much by love as by guilt at his anger toward his mother, George jumps from the train and makes his way back into the city.
What follows, an episodic, almost dreamlike journey through an unrecognizable reality adjacent to the life that George has known, feels unlike anything else and like something only McQueen could make. Because he continues to see the triumph and tragedy in the world, and has dedicated his working life to rendering that vision cinematically, he is one of those rare adults who (it would seem) can look children in the eye and let them know they are being seen. And, as an ally and a collaborator, he enables Heffernan to summon up a performance that, in its subtle transparency, rivals anything the grown-ups are doing (and they’re no slouches either).
Because we see war both from the homefront and from a child’s ground-level perspective, the reality of the situation becomes graver and more immediate than it is in something like Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017). The conflict, the loss, the devastation, are rendered with such matter-of-factness and immensity that the reality of the thing, the resourcefulness and perseverance that would seem impossible in its face, and yet with which people unfailing meet it, projects from the screen and fills the space in which we observe it.
Setting aside the truly astounding technical achievements of Blitz, we have a story and a collective performance that says more, albeit quietly, about the human spirit and its refusal to be stifled by institutions or its own, collective worst impulses. PG13. 120M. APPLE TV+.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
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For showtimes call: Broadway Cinema (707) 443-3456; Mill Creek Cinema 839-3456; Minor Theatre (707) 822-3456.
This article appears in Holiday Gift Guide 2024.