Steve McQueen Hopes We Refocus On The Global Conflicts Of Today

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 series of events transforms George’s innocence profoundly. An encounter with a West African police officer named Ife (Benjamin Clementine) presents young George with the part of his identity he never got to know because his Black father was deported prior to his birth. Constant negative depictions of Black people didn’t help him accept his identity, either.

“As a Black person, we know as a child, you are asking yourself who, how, why, and what, because you’re confronted, you’re put in a position, you become criticized at a very early age,” McQueen said passionately. “You have to understand the world around you, ’cause unfortunately, it’s hostile towards you. And no different to George in 1940. He had to understand; he had to get the hard lessons in order to sort of find out who he was.”

Prior to “Blitz,” British-born McQueen directed “Occupied City,” a four-and-a-half-hour documentary that examines the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam during World War II and its lasting impact on the Dutch city, where he now lives. Asked about his focus on war films, which tend to perform well during award season, McQueen replied, “I don’t concern myself with that.”

“My concern is: do something hard, do something of interest, exciting for me,” he said. “And so the situation with ‘Blitz’ is a case of using the sort of the so-called conventional to make something completely different.”

McQueen said the film comes at an unfortunate and timely moment in history, echoing conflicts in places like Sierra Leone, Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon. As audiences observe a war through a child’s eyes, he hopes their vision shifts. 

“As adults in some ways, we have to clear the path for the next generation. That’s what we’re about. We wanna leave the world in a better place than we came. That’s our job. And the fact that we are not doing our job is a tragedy. But the fact of the matter [is], there’s hope. I’m just grateful that this film I made could [help] people refocus their gaze.”

“Blitz” is now streaming on Apple TV+.