Reviews
Blitz
Reviewed by Stephanie Daly-Parks
Although the reviews by the audience at the Keswick Film Club on Sunday were quite favourable it only received 81% with Rotten Tomatoes, perhaps due to too many themes trying to take precedence.
The story centres on working class East End mum Rita (Saoirse Ronan) who lives with her dad (Paul Weller) and son George (Eric Heffernan) who is biracial as his father from Guyana was apparently deported for being an alien in Britain before the war. The Luftwaffe Blitzkrieg (London Blitz) was a turbulent time as bombs rained down all over London particularly the East End Stepney where the family lives.
Rita decides to send her nine year old son on the evacuation train to the country alongside lots of other children. He doesn't want to leave his musical mum and grandad and jumps off the train and eventually finds a train going back to London. The script becomes ever more fantastic as George lands up in London. There are flashbacks in Rita's life as we see her relationship with Marcus, George's father, before the war in a jazz nightclub. Marcus was attacked by rough white men, who tell the police that Marcus attacked them, the implication being that the police would only trust white men, not one sole black man or the testimony of his white girlfriend.
Rita works in a munitions factory and learns that her son George went missing from the train. She walks out of work in order to start searching through the shelters for her son. After more adventures George finds an underground shelter before there is another disaster where the underground becomes flooded with a burst water main. He squeezes under the gate to get help for people trapped in London Bridge Station. Eventually he wakes up a hero in a clean bed and then escapes to his mother arms sadly as his house had just been bombed and his grandad killed.
The film was made in Hull and the graphics were excellent. The scenes of devastation, the munitions factory and steam trains all seemed to recreate wartime Britain and were excellent. The music and songs were also very good but the script seemed rather far-fetched at times and made a number of political points, possibly lacking historical accuracy.
The story centres on working class East End mum Rita (Saoirse Ronan) who lives with her dad (Paul Weller) and son George (Eric Heffernan) who is biracial as his father from Guyana was apparently deported for being an alien in Britain before the war. The Luftwaffe Blitzkrieg (London Blitz) was a turbulent time as bombs rained down all over London particularly the East End Stepney where the family lives.
Rita decides to send her nine year old son on the evacuation train to the country alongside lots of other children. He doesn't want to leave his musical mum and grandad and jumps off the train and eventually finds a train going back to London. The script becomes ever more fantastic as George lands up in London. There are flashbacks in Rita's life as we see her relationship with Marcus, George's father, before the war in a jazz nightclub. Marcus was attacked by rough white men, who tell the police that Marcus attacked them, the implication being that the police would only trust white men, not one sole black man or the testimony of his white girlfriend.
Rita works in a munitions factory and learns that her son George went missing from the train. She walks out of work in order to start searching through the shelters for her son. After more adventures George finds an underground shelter before there is another disaster where the underground becomes flooded with a burst water main. He squeezes under the gate to get help for people trapped in London Bridge Station. Eventually he wakes up a hero in a clean bed and then escapes to his mother arms sadly as his house had just been bombed and his grandad killed.
The film was made in Hull and the graphics were excellent. The scenes of devastation, the munitions factory and steam trains all seemed to recreate wartime Britain and were excellent. The music and songs were also very good but the script seemed rather far-fetched at times and made a number of political points, possibly lacking historical accuracy.