There is a moment in Steve McQueen’s Blitz when Rita, a factory worker who can sing, gets rid of her son George, a child of a British man and a black woman. This is a common event in the life of British women, who were forced to send their mixed race boys to the countryside where there was no bombing, and she has to do it when her son George (Elliott Heffernan) is still very young. However, McQueen manages to make it tear jerking. Throughout the film, Blitz continues doing the same and it continues to do so during its two hours run time. From a montage of black and white movies accompanied by immigrants, supported only by the candid voice of McQueen, it is unpolished, new, and authentic.
Employing ‘D-Day Saving Private Ryan’ imagery to Stepney Green, the action begins with D-Day Saving Private Ryan’s ferocity. Amid furious firefighting in the aftermath of the Luftwaffe’s nocturnal robs, London had turned into a battleground (one person is still wary of Drogon with two buckets). At one point, the head of the hose wiggles out from another futile firefighter’s hand, gets thrown onto the floor, and begins to squirm like a snake. So, it combines both beauty and brutality, depicting World War Two from an entirely novel perspective that of the British people on the home front during the war.
Somewhere amidst the violence, George’s and Rita’s stories appear to be braided together and it feels simple. From the moment George steps off that moving train, Blitz is on the verge of resembling a fable. There are antics on top of trains, encounters with a band of large handed, charactery Dickensian thieves (Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke) and an inundated tube station. It might be that this sequence of incidents is rather loose as the picaresque continues, but it is exhilarating almost all the time.
In one of the most heartbreaking scenarios, George eventually goes on an odyssey to reclaim his ancestry. He meets a Nigerian Air Raid Protector named Ife (a scintillating and affable Benjamin Clementine) who finds him at a high end parler admiring miniature displays of Africans being demonized in films. George has always faced racist insults in the past, but with the patient advocacy of Ife he slowly starts developing a bond with his ugly history.
Rita on the other hand, grapples to find her identity and works at a shelter for the homeless. McQueen is always very clear of never being corny and instead respects the portrayal of the Bombay spirit and the sense of unity that grows in a war. It turns out that we are not too futuristic in our thinking, Blitz apart from showing London in the 40s as a cauldron of rich culture, shows women as leaders, whether it is in politics and fighting for adequate shelter, or even for the sexual freedom we link with the 60s.
Other British cinema comes to mind in his picture the heroic self-sacrificing centers of Jennings’ documentary, the moral judgments of the Powell and Pressburger film, and the songs in pubs in Davies’ films but McQueen speaks with a voice of his own. The Parisian diesel locomotive thunder mixed with German plane engines turns into a picture of Tsundere. shami strength. The transformation is softened by coarse images of flowers punctuating the plot. Some gratified the rest of us but perhaps most hard hitting was an assemblage of bomb construction, relentlessly and haphazardly blurred over by Hans Zimmer music and the pleasing mechanistic whirr of the machinery the irony of Rita assisting in constructing killing devices is of course to be pointed out by the filmmaker.
In the case of McQueen’s other movies, music is a constant feature. It provides heart wrenching episodes of family tenderness when Weller is almost going underground, together with Rita and George, they sing “Ain’t Misbehaving’” around crumbling piano. It is a source of national spirit when Rita sings on BBC transmission from her factory. And it allows for entertainment in the hardest of times. When the film returns to Rita’s first encounter with George’s father Marcus (CJ Beckford), McQueen stages a blistering club scene, which is exhilarating and sexy in its interracial dance sequences. Afterward, he simply takes us by surprise in the sound bunker of the Café de Paris, demonically fierce when all the bombs are falling about the place. The explanation as to why we are there is chilling.
Blitz believes Ronan is at the top of her career giving an astounding performance as an East Ender, but the movie itself relies heavily on young Elliott Heffernan who combines energy and stillness to convey a lot without saying a word. The approach taken by Heffernan alongside McQueen and Ronan will surely leave you heartbroken just like Rita did.
There is a moment in Steve McQueen’s Blitz when Rita, a factory worker who can sing, gets rid of her son George, a child of a British man and a black woman. This is a common event in the life of British women, who were forced to send their mixed race boys to the countryside where there was no bombing, and she has to do it when her son George (Elliott Heffernan) is still very young. However, McQueen manages to make it tear jerking. Throughout the film, Blitz continues doing the same and it continues to do so during its two hours run time. From a montage of black andwhite movies accompanied by immigrants, supported only by the candid voice of McQueen, it is unpolished, new and authentic.
Employing ‘D-Day Saving Private Ryan’ imagery to Stoney Green, the action begins with D-Day Saving Private Ryan’s ferocity. Amid furious firefighting in the aftermath of the Luftwaffe’s nocturnal robs, London had turned into a battleground (one person is still wary of Drogon with two buckets). At one point, the head of the hose wiggles out from another futile firefighter’s hand, gets thrown onto the floor, and begins to squirm like a snake. So, it combines both beauty and brutality, depicting World War Two from an entirely novel perspective that of the British people on the home front during the war.
Somewhere amidst the violence, George’s and Rita’s stories appear to be braided together and it feels simple. From the moment George steps off that moving train, Blitz is on the verge of resembling a fable. There are antics on top of trains, encounters with a band of large handed, character Dickensian thieves (Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke) and an inundated tube station. It might be that this sequence of incidents is rather loose as the picaresque continues, but it is exhilarating almost all the time.
In one of the most heartbreaking scenarios, George eventually goes on an odyssey to reclaim his ancestry. He meets a Nigerian Air Raid Protector named Ife (a scintillating and affable Benjamin Clementine) who finds him at a high end parler admiring miniature displays of Africans being demonized in films. George has always faced racist insults in the past, but with the patient advocacy of Ife he slowly starts developing a bond with his ugly history.
Rita on the other hand, grapples to find her identity and works at a shelter for the homeless. McQueen is always very clear of never being corny and instead respects the portrayal of the Bombay spirit and the sense of unity that grows in a war. It turns out that we are not too futuristic in our thinking, Blitz apart from showing London in the 40s as a cauldron of rich culture, shows women as leaders, whether it is in politics and fighting for adequate shelters, or even for the sexual freedom we link with the 60s.
Other British cinema comes to mind in his picture the heroic self-sacrificing centers of Jennings’ documentary, the moral judgments of the Powell and Pressburger film, the songs in pubs in Davies’ films but McQueen speaks with a voice of his own. The Parisian diesel locomotive thunder mixed with German plane engines turns into a picture of Tsundere. shami strength. The transformation is softened by coarse images of flowers punctuating the plot. Some gratified the rest of us but perhaps most hard-hitting was an assemblage of bomb construction, relentlessly and haphazardly blurred over by Hans Zimmer music and the pleasing mechanistic whirr of the machinery — the irony of Rita assisting in constructing killing devices is of course to be pointed out by the filmmaker.
In the case of McQueen’s other movies, music is a constant feature. It provides heart wrenching episodes of family tenderness when Weller is almost going underground, together with Rita and George, they sing “Ain’t Misbehavin’” around crumbling piano. It is a source of national spirit when Rita sings on BBC transmission from her factory. And it allows for entertainment in the hardest of times. When the film returns to Rita’s first encounter with George’s father Marcus (CJ Beckford), McQueen stages a blistering club scene, which is exhilarating and sexy in its inter-racial dance sequences. Afterwards he simply takes us by surprise in the sound bunker of the Café de Paris, daemonically fierce when all the bombs are falling about the place. The explanation as to why we are there is chilling.
Blitz believes Ronan is at the top of her career giving an astounding performance as an East Ender, but the movie itself relies heavily on young Elliott Heffernan who combines energy and stillness to convey a lot without saying a word. The approach taken by Heffernan alongside McQueen and Ronan will surely leave you heartbroken just like Rita did.
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