Diksha Sundriyal
Apple TV+’s ‘Blitz’ is a World War II drama that takes a different route in telling the story of the war. Instead of taking us to a battlefield, the movie brings us into the heart of London and focuses almost entirely on civilians, who have to find ways to survive and live as the city is bombed by the Nazis every other night. At the heart of it is the story of a woman named Rita and her 9-year-old son, George. To keep George safe, Rita has to send her son to the countryside, where he will be away from danger. However, George doesn’t want to leave his mother and his home, so he decides to make his way back to the city. Through his journey, we see a different side of London and writer-director Steve McQueen made sure that what the audience sees on the screen is as authentic as possible. Still, there is a thread of fiction running through the story in the form of the central characters.
George’s Character was Inspired by the Photo of a Real Boy
While ‘Blitz’ has a real historical event as its background, the story and its characters, particularly Rita and her son, George, are entirely fictional. The idea of working on a war movie came to Steve McQueen after his time in Iraq in the mid-2010s when he was embedded with British soldiers there. It was in the dire circumstances of war that he felt a strong sense of camaraderie and nationalism, which inspired him to tell a similar story but closer to home. He began researching the times of the Second World War in England, and the Blitz became the focal point of that research.
It was during the research, which was primarily for another project, ‘Small Axe,’ that he came across the picture of a Black boy with a cap, a big suitcase, and a cat. The child, like millions of other children at the time, was ready for evacuation. The image of a young child alone in a city razed by war stuck with McQueen. He became interested in the story of the boy and started wondering about his background, his parents, and why he was away from home. This served as the starting point for what would eventually turn into George’s story and his quest to come back home.
Exploring a war story from the perspective of a child was a unique thing for McQueen, as it isn’t something that has been rarely explored, if at all, before. It also allowed the director to subvert the genre and its tropes and bring something fresh to the table while also being able to touch upon the issues of racism, classism, and sexism and, at the same time, focus on the diversity of London at the time. Above all, however, the perspective of a child would allow him, as well as the audience, to see war and its destructive nature from a new light and think about the world and its wars today that we seem to have become numb to. Still, with all the destruction and violence on the surface, the movie echoes the love between a mother and her son, and that’s what drives the story.
Rita Represents the Women Who Are Often Ignored in War Stories
If through George, McQueen wanted to explore a different perspective, through Rita, he wanted to focus on something that has been ignored in almost all the retellings of war stories in Hollywood. When men went to war, women handled everything back home. From taking care of old parents and young children to working in munitions factories, women kept things together while dealing with their own problems. McQueen felt that their contribution hadn’t been adequately represented in movies, and through Rita, he wanted to bring about a change in this context. While the story mainly revolves around Rita’s love for her child, McQueen didn’t want her character to be stifled by that plot point. He wanted her to be a fleshed-out person rather than being restricted to the role of a mother.
Rita’s job at the factory, her vibrant fashion sense despite the depressing time of war, and her talent for singing were the things that McQueen wrote about Rita to make her a complete person rather than limiting her to the role of a mother. While preparing for the role, Saoirse Ronan worked with a dialect coach to get the East London accent right. The actress noted the hint of properness in the accent as well as the dressing sense of the women at the time and leaned into this desire to appear good at all times. Ronan also worked on her natural singing skills, as singing is a major part of Rita’s life. Through this, Ronan grounded her character in reality and gave a strong touch of realism and relatability to Rita, even though she is an entirely fictional character.
Read More: Where is Apple TV+’s Blitz Filmed?
