Steve McQueen’s goal with ‘Blitz’: to paint a more truthful portrait of WWII London
LA TimesFor British director Steve McQueen, the past isn’t worth dramatizing unless it can illuminate the present, so when he makes films steeped in history — whether it’s “12 Years a Slave” or his World War II epic “Blitz” — he’s asking audiences to judge where we are now in relation to what’s happened before. While conducting research for “Small Axe,” his 2020 anthology of films about resilience in the city’s West Indian community, McQueen had come across a photograph of a Black boy on a train station platform awaiting evacuation during the Blitz. “It’s not ‘Oliver Twist.’” George’s single mom makes bombs and tries to do best by her bullied son and her father, who lives with them. “Everything is, in some ways, finding your way home, self-determination.” McQueen remembers being taught about the Blitz in school, and its importance to Britain’s sense of self.
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