A title card for Steve McQueen’s harrowing and viscerally impactful historical war drama “Blitz” tells us that during the German bombing campaign of London in World War II, some 1.25 million people were evacuated from the city, and more than half of them were children. When a 9-year-old boy in London bids goodbye to his mother and boards a train for the British countryside, we assume the movie will be about the evacuation — but when the lad jumps off that train and makes it his mission to find his way home, “Blitz” becomes something else.
In ways sometimes subtle and sometimes anything but, writer-director McQueen tells a story that on one level is a conventional tale of valor but is also a cutting commentary about how even as war-torn England was united in its staunch repudiation of Hitler, racism and classicism were all too commonplace in its own backyard.
“Blitz” takes place in the fall of 1940, about a year into the war in Europe and a year before the United States joined the fight. Saoirse Ronan, who is still just 30 but already has four Oscar and five BAFTA nominations, delivers some of her finest work yet here. She plays Rita, a single mother who lives with her 9-year-old son George (Elliott Heffernan) and her father, Gerald (the legendary British musician Paul Weller, best known for the rock band The Jam), in a ramshackle London neighborhood. (We’re deep into the story before we learn why Elliott’s father, a Grenadian immigrant played by CJ Beckford, hasn’t been in the picture for quite some time.)
Even against the backdrop of air raid sirens ringing through the night and bombings rocking the city to its core, and the ugliness of the local boys bullying Elliott because he is Black, there are moments of tenderness and love in Rita’s family, and room for a bit of laughter, drink and song with Rita and her friends who work with her at a local munitions factory.
These small shards of normalcy are shattered when George has to join the hundreds of thousands of other children evacuating the city. After a heartbreaking farewell scene at the station where the frightened and angry George tells his mother that he hates her, followed by some nasty racism on the train, George jumps off in the middle of nowhere and embarks on a harrowing journey to make his way back home to his mother.
For a long stretch of time, Elliott Heffernan as George is tasked with carrying the heaviest load of the film (crosscut with scenes of Rita, desperately trying to find her son), and the young actor is up to the task. George befriends a trio of brothers who are also trying to make their way home; meets a kindly and protective police officer (Benjamin Clementine); and, in a scene that plays like something out of “Les Misérables,” is “helped” by a woman (Mica Ricketts) who betrays him and hands him over to some despicable thieves (Kathy Burke and Stephen Graham).
Time and again, George is treated as something lesser because of the color of his skin. The bombs dropping from the sky are devastating; the bigotry and xenophobia on display in too many corners of the city are sickening.
Not that “Blitz” doesn’t have its moments of hope and heroism, and simple human decency. The mother’s devotion that Rita has for her son is timeless and will touch your heart. It’s also lovely to see how Rita’s father has such abiding love for his daughter and his grandson. This gentle and quiet man clearly could not give two flying figs about what others in the neighborhood think about his family.
McQueen (“12 Years a Slave,” “Widows”), cinematographer Yorick Le Saux and the production design team make great use of various locations in the city of Hull. which has been used so often in productions including “The Crown,” “The Extraordinary Life of David Copperfield” and “Enola Holmes 2” that it has been dubbed “Hullywood.” The costumes and cars and the ambitious set pieces, sometimes employing hundreds of extras, give “Blitz” the feeling of an epic, even though it’s arguably more effective in the relatively smaller moments when major reveals take place. This is not an easy film to watch; there are times when you can be forgiven for wanting to look away from the carnage. The effort is worth the reward, as Rita and George will stay with you long after the credits have rolled.