Blitz
Directed by Steve McQueen
Certificate 12a
120 minutes
Released 8 November

People just getting on with life in dire circumstances, doing what they have to do. A mother searches for her lost son. An 11-year-old embraces his black identity. Women work in munitions factories. Thieves take advantage of death and devastation to turn a profit. And, unexpectedly, a spiritually dark place produces an impassioned plea for the virtues of Christianity.

This is London during the Nazi bombings of the Second World War. Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, the Small Axe TV series) and his collaborators have done remarkable historical and visual research, so that the historical situation seeps into you. McQueen’s way in was a photograph of a young black boy, around whom he has woven a story of an evacuee jumping from the train to return to his mum.

In a remarkable performance, 11-year-old Elliot Heffernan plays the boy, George, an East Ender who must suddenly navigate the perils of wartime London alone as he attempts to get home. Good and bad await him. Good in the form of kindly, black air raid warden Ife (the musician Benjamin Sainte-Clémentine), who finds the boy in a West End shopping arcade, takes him under his wing and ensures he has shelter for the night. Bad in the form of black Jess (Mica Ricketts), whose offer of food masks her recruiting him into a gang of looters headed by hard-nosed Albert (Steven Graham) and the fearsome Beryl (Kathy Burke).

Single parent mum and factory girl Rita (Saorise Ronan), supported by George’s grandpa (another musician, Paul Weller), takes time off once she discovers her son is missing. At night, she works at the Stepney shelter run out of the former Fruit and Wool Exchange by Mickey the Midget (Leigh Gill). Mickey, a Jew, makes an extraordinary speech to shelter users encouraging them to embrace Christian morality: it has much to do with the Britain of the day, and, refreshingly, is not at all cringeworthy.

Even without its story, it’s an immersive experience best seen on a massive screen. Compelling set pieces deliver firefighters in blazing chaos, a lavish nightclub – soon to be bombed into oblivion – with a singer in full swing, and the moment local fireman Jack (Harris Dickinson) prevents Rita from being crushed by a falling wall.

Jeremy Clarke is a film critic. His website is jeremycprocessing.com

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This is an extract from an article published in the November 2024 edition of Reform

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