by Gill Pringle
British director Steve McQueen pointed his lens on Ireland for Hunger, New York for Shame, Louisiana for 12 Years a Slave and Chicago for Widows. But his latest film Blitz is far more personal, set in his own hometown, London.
The historical drama follows the epic journey of George, a 9-year-old boy during World War II, whose mother sends him to safety in the English countryside. Defiant and determined to return home to his mum and grandad in East London, George embarks on an adventure, only to find himself lost and in danger, while his distraught mother searches for her missing son.
“As a Londoner, I’ve often reflected on what has forged our strong and proud identities. I grew up acutely aware of the monumental impact that the German aerial onslaught known as ‘the Blitz’ had on the city,” says the Oscar-winning director/writer when we meet in Los Angeles.
“It was a harrowing time that in many ways yielded the elemental stiff-upper-lip constitution that permeates our national psyche to this day. But it was also a time of communal resilience, when people came together with the shared primal purpose of survival, and in some corners, a ‘Blitz spirit’ took hold,” says McQueen for whom this is a passion project, two decades in the making.
“I first started thinking about making a film about the Blitz in the early 2000s. It was constantly on my mind, but it was only when I discovered a photograph while researching my anthology film series Small Axe that I finally found a way in. It was an image of a small black boy standing on a train platform with a large suitcase. That image stayed with me in an almost omnipresent ghostly way, and I continued to find myself wondering who this child was, what was his story during the Blitz?” recalls the visionary director.
Enter young Elliott Heffernan who, after an exhaustive search, was ultimately tapped to play the lead character. As it happens, he had recently learned about the Blitz in history lessons at school.
“I knew about the Blitz, the bombing of London and people being evacuated, which is a bit sad,” says Heffernan. “Some kids would go and never come back, never seeing their parents again. Being a parent must have been heartbreaking, knowing there was a chance you might not see your child again.”
From his initial vision, McQueen wanted the story to be told through the lens of innocence. “For a child, everything seems three times bigger. When a child witnesses their parents argue, it’s the worst thing possible. So, a child in this surreal landscape of war, is unimaginable. Through George, we are able to understand the madness that is going on. Seeing the atrocities reflected in a child’s eyes, in a way, makes us sober. You feel the weight of the situation and see yourself in George and you recognise your own pain within his pain.”
In a stroke of perfect casting, Saoirse Ronan – herself a former child actor – was cast as George’s mum Rita, a woman who will do anything to protect her 9-year-old son, broken-hearted when she is forced to send him to the countryside along with all the other evacuated kids.
It wasn’t hard for the Irish actress to portray the closeness between a young mum and her son. “It’s exactly in the way that a young parent does with their kids, you know?” she says.
“I mean, like my mam had me when she was 30, so she wasn’t super young, but there’s an element to our relationship that is almost like we’re sisters,” she says of her mother Monica Brennan whom she has credited for accompanying her on film sets as a teen.
Working with former Jam frontman, Paul Weller, who plays Rita’s pianist father Gerald, was an unexpected bonus. “Having Paul Weller play my father was surreal. Who could ever imagine a rock star like him playing your dad? He’s the kindest, most down-to-earth person, and he really committed to the role. Even though Paul hadn’t acted before, he was so humble and open to learning. I absolutely loved spending time with him – he’s truly a special person,” says the four-time Oscar nominee whose films include Atonement, The Lovely Bones, Hanna, Brooklyn and Lady Bird among many other memorable roles.
She was amazed at the fortitude and bravery of Londoners during the 1940s Blitz. “We actually spoke to survivors of the Blitz, and granted, they were much younger when they had experienced it, but it’s amazing how like, in a much milder sense, even with something like Covid, you do just adapt to it.
“There’s obviously some sort of trauma happening somewhere in the back of your head, but like you just go, ‘okay, this is our reality now,’” she says.
Refusing to let the war ruin her style, Ronan’s Rita is rarely seen without her red lipstick, form-fitting outfits and heels. “I worked with Jacqueline Durran, a brilliant costume designer who I’ve known since I was a child. The clothes needed to be her armour. And a huge part of the character was that, in spite of everything, and in spite of the destruction that’s all around her, in spite of the fact that she’s going through a real little tragedy of being separated from her child, she still has to put on this beautiful garment every day and step outside the front door and go out.
“That was the incredible thing about the working classes everywhere. It’s almost like, the less you have, the more effort you would make in order to keep going. You’d always put your red lipstick on, and you’d always do your hair when you’d leave work and that was a part of keeping on, you know?” says Ronan, 30, who also currently stars in Scottish drama, The Outrun.
But the most important thing to get right was convincingly portraying the anguish of a mother, torn apart from her son, keenly discussing this with McQueen. “We spoke a lot about our own mothers and how much of an impact it had on us, and how formative my relationship was, in particular, with the mother and that really set the tone for who George and Rita were as a pair, really,” she recalls.
Furthermore, McQueen wanted to explore themes of race and prejudice by making a film about identity, not simply through the lens of British people, but that of a British biracial youth like George, someone coming of age and discovering who he is but also about attitudes towards the colour of his skin.
“He sees how people look at him and how they view him outside of his own loving family,” says McQueen. “I wanted George to find out how he is within the context of the world at that moment in time. He’s being looked at differently, and not necessarily positively.”
In her initial meeting with McQueen, Ronan was taken by the opportunity to explore these perspectives and pleased to know that Blitz would be a fresh story within the war film genre.
“I don’t think I would have made this movie otherwise,” she says. “If it was going to be on a battlefield, and there was going to be a quick cut back to the mothers and wives, that was never something I was going to be interested in doing. The reason why I wanted to do this was because it was set at home, and we were actually giving time to the people who were still working at home. What’s special about the film is that it’s highlighting the sacrifice that was made by those who stayed. To have a film that focuses on those communities is really important.”
Without Ronan and young Heffernan, McQueen doesn’t believe he could have made the film.
“The thing that gave me the most anxiety was to find the love between the mother and the son,” recalls McQueen.
“Once I had that, once that foundation was there and it was palpable, then everything’s easy. Love is the base of this film. Love is everything we’re living for, everything we’re dying for. And once you had these two characters having this huge bond… I mean, goodness gracious, there was such an amazing chemistry between them.”
Blitz is streaming on Apple TV+ from 22 November 2024
