Alan in Belfast: Blitz – Steve McQueen pulls at the less well explored threads of wartime London (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 8 November)

Blitz is on a similar scale to war films like Dunkirk. Its sets are huge, stuffed full of extras and moving machinery. CGI allow the camera to rise above London to see the scale of destruction from the German bombing raids. Yet at its heart, Blitz is the story of a single mum Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and her son George (Elliott Heffernan) during a couple of days in 1940.

The script could have been predictable. Plucky Londoners taking shelter and pulling together when the bombs decimate their homes and families. Yet writer/director Steve McQueen hasn’t settled for simple remembrance and jingoism. He instead pulls at the threads of the well-understood period of wartime history and highlights how Londoners didn’t have adequate access to safe air raid shelters: tube stations were meant to be off limits. How racism was rife, seen through George’s experience as a biracial child who never knew his deported father. How social justice was misinterpreted as communism: “Maybe Jesus was a red?” McQueen also shines a light on the looting of the shops and corpses: one person’s tragedy is always someone else’s opportunity.

“Please Mum, don’t send me away” is not just the cry of a child not wanting to step into the unknown of being evacuated. It’s the cry of a child who is already bullied for being different. The cry of a child who has precious few friends and feels safer at home under the threat of aerial bombardment than sent across England to spend the next few months and maybe longer with strangers. George doesn’t stay evacuated for long, and much of the film follows his intrepid journey back to find the family home.

In a world where everything is fragile, finding who can be trusted is difficult. But the story includes moments of great humanity. An air raid warden called Ife shows great kindness to young George, and over the course of a few precious hours treats him like a son. Their bond is beautiful, and cruelly short-lived.

George is a scrapper. Rita is a survivor. Young Hefferman makes his professional debut in this film and thrives on portraying loveable, nippy on his feet (he’ll go on to be an adult actor doing his own stunts!), quick thinking, and strong. Other than some great musical numbers that show off her voice, the screenplay doesn’t give Ronan much opportunity to diverge from a mix of stoicism and fear. Paul Weller – yes, that Paul Weller – completes the household, playing Rita’s dad. Like every film I’ve watched this week, there’s an animal in it with a sense of purpose and a strong presence. This time it’s Ollie the cat (played by Zinger and Tinkerbell) who certainly knows how to occupy a bed.

Music plays a big role in Blitz. Jazz is how Rita met George’s father. And it’s the scene of an extraordinary transition as the brash music and dancing fall silent and Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack picks up the melody of Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh! in a minor key. And in a rare red herring in an otherwise well-constructed two-hour film, a grand piano hangs overhead Chekhov-style in one scene, but we’re never granted the satisfaction of hearing it fall to the ground.

Blitz is a film that concentrates on the little people, those on the margins of society, and those who were already high up in the loss stakes before bombs destroyed their homes and communities. In many ways it is low key, but that’s a strength. The film will soon appear on Apple TV+ on Friday 22 November. But given the scale of the ambitious production, it’s well worth viewing Blitz on the big screen with the benefit of a proper surround sound system at Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 8 November.