4.5/5

Review by John P. Harvey.

George (Elliott Heffernan), a London boy with a white mother and a black father he has never known, is used to racism even amongst the few friends with whom he plays street cricket.  Torn between standing up to overt racism — as his grandfather, Gerald (Paul Weller), encourages him to — and disclaiming his black inheritance, George is nine when, in September 1940, the biggest bullies of all arrive, pounding London and other cities with eight months of continual aerial bombing in what they called a Blitzkrieg (lightning war) and the British called The Blitz.

Once George’s mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), realises that her father, Gerald, has been right in saying that she should evacuate George to the country, she organises it and takes him to the train that will take him far into the countryside.  But George is unwilling to go and, just an hour into the journey, jumps from the train to make his way home again, with a little food and drink and little idea of how to get there.

Directed by Steve McQueen (who also directed 12 Years a Slave and Occupied City), Blitz depicts in realistic detail the dangers that such a journey could have entailed, from the inevitable nearby explosions of falling bombs to the surprisingly vicious behaviour of gangsters ready to loot freshly bombed premises and the newly deceased.  It also, though, exemplifies the better side of human nature, in cooperation between strangers, in kindnesses and sacrifices, and in acts of great courage for others’ sakes.

With camera work that at times takes us up close to those expertly and energetically dancing on the dance floor of a blacked-out but high-class nightclub, that at other times pulls into the frame the horrifying totality of destructive hellfire unleashed simultaneously upon a single London suburb, and that at still other times captures the panic-inducing inundation of those crowded into an underground railway station, Blitz succeeds in expanding the tale of a boy’s journey from self concern to selfless courage to incidentally incorporate a backdrop of far greater expanse and significance.  In so doing, it makes the journey of a fictional boy an illumination of universal truths that is worthy of a couple of riveting hours.

Screening at Palace cinemas.