Saorise Ronan stars as a mother desperately searching for her lost son during the Nazi bombardment of London
The Second World War is well-trodden ground both in film and television, but for 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen there were still aspects of these horrors that had gone untold. In his new film, Blitz, we follow George (Elliott Heffernan), an interracial young boy whose single mother (Saoirse Ronan) feels the need to send him away from London during the bombings. When George decides to embark on his own adventure instead, his distraught mother is forced to look for her missing son, while war rages around them.
The emotional story came to McQueen in stages. “I was a war artist in 2003, and I went to Iraq,” explains the director. “That was the starting point, to an extent.” The native Londoner had long been interested in the Blitz, the eight-month period between 1940 and 1941 when the Germans bombarded London. But it was while shooting his anthology series, Small Axe, that McQueen came across a photo that would tie it all together. “In my research I found an image of this black boy on a platform with an oversized coat and a large suitcase, with a cat. And I was like, ‘What’s his story? Where did he come from?’” McQueen explains. “In some ways I was looking for an ‘in’ of how to get into the Blitz. And I thought, ‘Wow, looking at war through a child’s eyes could be amazing.’”
From a storytelling standpoint, a young black child would certainly offer a new perspective on a well-documented event like WWII. “With children — which I love — there’s right and there’s wrong and there’s good and there’s bad,” says McQueen. “They haven’t got into a place with ambiguity and some sort of fudging of the lines or compromising. It’s just good or bad, which I think is pretty beautiful.”
What the director wants to stress is that, although centred around a child, this is not a kids’ movie. “It’s an adult movie, which has a child in it,” he says. “The tone is not cute. The tone is war, the tone is truthful. We’re not pulling any punches.” But within that truth, McQueen was able to expose some of the insanity in war. “Through a child’s eyes, you see how utterly ridiculous it is,” he says. “When I saw that photograph, that was my hallelujah moment in a way, because I had an in on talking about a subject matter which had been, in some ways, sanitized. And I wanted it to be as dirty and ugly and messy and filthy as it is. I mean, ever since going to Iraq, the truth for me had to be told. And I think that my only way of doing it was through a child’s eyes.”
Finding the right actor to simulate these circumstances was not the easiest task. In fact, it was something McQueen had concerns about. “When you write this script, you’re thinking, ‘My God, does this person exist? Can I find this genius?’ And luckily enough we did,” he says. “There was an open audition and this gentleman came on the screen — he was eight years old when I auditioned him — and he had this face, almost like a silent movie star where you think you read him, but you don’t know if you’ve read him. He held your gaze and that was it. He had never acted before in his life, but he had the truth.”
The other, equally important, perspective is that of a mother looking for her son. For McQueen, there is a singular quality about Ronan that made her the perfect person for the role. “I think Saoirse has a certain kind of earthiness, a certain sense of truth or authenticity,” he says. “There’s a real sense of honesty in her face. And I love that. It’s like Greta Garbo or Bette Davis. She’s a real leading lady, in a way. And I was very grateful that she could sing as well.”
Music, in fact, plays a big part in the film, with Ronan showing off her chops, but also in ways that highlight the need for community in hard times. “When people are singing together, it’s interesting, isn’t it? There’s a kind of lulling, that it is going to be better, when you hear other people’s voice with your voice,” muses McQueen. “There’s a sense of togetherness, a communal spirit. I think the British are very odd people, in the way that, in their heart, they hide things. But you don’t have to hide it when you’re singing. You can actually share it, which is beautiful.” To that end, McQueen says his movie has one main theme that roots the action in any time period: “My film very much is about love. And I mean it in a real way. The only thing worth living for, the only thing worth dying for, is love. That’s it. Within this cesspool we find ourselves in, sometimes it’s our only guiding light. I think that’s hopefully amplified by this film.”
Blitz, begins streaming Friday, November 22 on Apple TV+