Steve McQueen takes a very cerebral approach to his work. His films and the characters in them explore big concepts in concentrated ways: enslavement in “12 Years A Slave,” race, gender and politics in “Widows,” and overcoming injustice in the “Small Axe” anthology.
That’s the same for his latest, “Blitz,” which premiered in theaters in early November and is now streaming on Apple TV+. The film is a historical war drama that follows a 9-year-old biracial boy named George (Elliott Heffernan) as he journeys home to his mother (Saoirse Ronan) after being evacuated during Nazi Germany’s bombardment of London in 1940. As George makes his way home, he encounters a harsh reality that he’s never faced, part of which leads him to discover his own Blackness.
During a Zoom interview in late October, McQueen called “Blitz” an expression of his interest in revolution. Revolution is a “big word,” he said, but he sees it as his duty.
“I’ve got to do something different. I have to, because of who I am, what I look like, and what I owe to people who have put me in this situation where I’m talking to you today,” he said. “It’s important that I try to tell these stories, and also not just for me and people who’ve put me here, but for everybody.”
While researching for his “Small Axe” series, McQueen came across an old photo of a young Black boy in London.
It immediately brought on feelings of “protection of a sweet, beautiful Black child who was gonna be evacuated,” the director said. “Therefore, I wanted to find out who he was and I just projected a story onto him, who he was and how I could put on an act, how I could actually work with that image to tell a narrative.”
That photo became his catalyst for writing, directing and producing “Blitz.” McQueen emphasized that it’s an anomaly to see wartime stories set in London that depict people of color. But leaving them out is ahistoric and influences how the public sees the past.
“Any war reference, you’d never see any of us in that situation,” McQueen said matter-of-factly. He recalled a Chinese man who hid underground during the war at 3 years old who thanked him for “making [him] visible.”
McQueen continued, “I wasn’t flexing. I was just sort of doing something; the landscape was so rich that the fact that these things came about was only there to help me on George’s journey.”
In the film, a…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at TV & Film…