Paul Weller makes his screen debut alongside Saoirse Ronan (Rita) and Elliott Heffernan (George ) in Blitz. Photo / supplied
Paul Weller makes his screen debut alongside Saoirse Ronan (Rita) and Elliott Heffernan (George ) in Blitz. Photo / supplied
English rock veteran Paul Weller has marked this year with another fine album entitled 66, his age, and made his screen acting debut playing a doting 1940s granddad in Blitz. He doesn’t get many lines and spends much of his time in the parlour at the piano, accompanied by hisdaughter Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and 9-year-old grandson George (Elliott Heffernan). The boy’s father was a Grenadian immigrant who, we learn later, was deported.
As the name suggests, the sprawling and most conventional movie yet by Turner Prize-winning artist-turned-director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) is set during the Nazi bombing of British cities during World War II.
So, when the sirens sound, the London East End trio must scuttle to the nearest tube station (which possibly amused Weller, whose songbook includes Down in the Tube Station at Midnight and Going Underground).
The story follows what happens when George joins the kids being evacuated to the countryside but decides to leg it back home. His cross-country adventures prove to be a mix of boys’ own and brutal.
He encounters a Dickensian nightmare involving a gang of thieves (led by Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke) stealing the jewellery from bomb raid casualties, and kindly warden Ife (Benjamin Clementine), a Nigerian who gives George a valuable lesson in being black and British.
Meanwhile, Mum and Grandpa keep calm and carry on and Rita’s bomb factory workplace is involved in a storyline about protests over inadequate shelter facilities.
McQueen, also the writer, has chronicled London black history before in his terrific Small Axe anthology. This isn’t as politically forthright, and his skewering of the supposed blitz spirit is hardly radical.
That mix of social realism and George’s odyssey don’t always feel like they belong in the same bluntly edited film and one can feel there was a longer movie or a TV series in mind.
Occasionally looking like she has stepped from a homefront workforce propaganda poster, Ronan is perfectly cast but woefully underused, and Heffernan isn’t up to the task of carrying so much of the drama.
It’s an impressive depiction of the era, but one that doesn’t quite hit home in its storytelling.
Rating out of five: ★★★
Blitz, directed by Steve McQueen is streaming now on Apple TV+
