You are asleep in your bed when a siren jolts you awake.  This is not unexpected, but the heart starts pumping a little faster as you gather yourself as quickly as possible to head out the door.  Your destination is the underground train station, not built specifically for its current use, but deep enough to protect you and your neighbors from the terror from the skies.  Terror, you may ask?  Another nation’s air force is raining destruction upon your city because they think you should be a part of their country regardless of your opinion on the matter.  What I have described could be applied to Ukraine right now, but it has happened before and is the subject of today’s film, Blitz (2024).  My feeble attempt at giving you a sense of the experience of the film thus far does not do it justice, but I will continue anyway.

I wish there was a better way of telling you about Blitz, but it starts right away with a German bombing raid on London during World War II.  Fires are raging and emergency personnel are doing their best to combat the flames.  In the middle of this horror, in the London district knowns as Stepney, lives young George (Elliott Heffernan) and his mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan).  They reside with her pianist father, Gerald (Paul Weller).  As we are shown during later flashbacks, George’s father, Marcus (C.J. Beckford), had been arrested before the birth of his son.  After being the target of racial violence, the police had arrested Marcus for the ensuing street brawl despite simply defending himself.  He is then deported.  Sound familiar?  Anyway, aside from all this unhappiness, today is not a good day for George and Rita.  During an opening crawl, we learn that because of the devastation, London residents have been sending their children to the countryside for safety.  Despite their happiness being together, Rita explains to George that this is happening to him for his protection.  He pleads to stay, but she gently but firmly takes him to the station with many tears.  Before boarding, he says that he hates her.  From this point on, you get two different stories taking place as mother and son get through the forty-eight hours.  For George, instead of staying on the train and dealing with the bullies that make fun of him for the color of his skin, he jumps off and heads back to London.  Along the way, he hops onto another freight going in that direction and encounters a group of friendlier boys.  However, upon reaching the outskirts of the city, they are forced to disembark and scatter.  Once more on his own, he makes it into the downtown district on a bus, asking for directions to Stepney.  They are as bewildering to him as they would be to any tourist, and he is found that night by Ife (Benjamin Clementine), a Nigerian born Air Raids Precautions (ARP) officer.  Taking George into his care, Ife guides the boy to the nearest shelter and tells George to stay there until the morning.  Unfortunately, when that time comes, George overhears other ARP officials talking about Ife’s death while saving people from a burning building.  Alone again, George is staring at a baked good in a shop window when he is spotted by Jess (Mica Ricketts).  She gives George some of her food and promises a proper sandwich if he will tell her his name.  Instead, she delivers him to Albert (Stephen Graham), the leader of a small band of thieves.  Through intimidation, threats of handing George over to the authorities that will return him to the countryside, and violence, Albert makes the boy fit into tight places in order to pilfer valuables from exploded structures.  George is only able to get away when they are picking over the corpses of a bombed-out dance hall, and, for yet another period, is running the streets on his own.  In the middle of a subsequent raid, he makes his way into a tube station and falls asleep.  It is not the detonations that awake him, but the in rush of water filling the area.  His diminutive size proves helpful when he is able to slip through a gate and go for help.  This time, he is found by a well-meaning woman who promises to take him home to Stepney, it being not far away.  Instead, she welcomes in ARP officers with the intent of taking him to the train.  He slips out the window and finds that he is indeed, close to home.  Unfortunately, when he arrives, he finds that his house has been destroyed and his grandfather is dead inside.  He fears the worse until Rita calls his name and they are finally reunited.  As for what Rita has been doing this entire time, she finds that she had been missing George to the point that she cannot function well at work or spend time with her friends.  Then, when she is told that her son has absconded from the train, she spends some time looking for George with the help of Jack (Harris Dickinson), a friend and ARP officer.  In the process, she also volunteers to help in the shelters.  Luckily, she had not been in the house when it is hit by the bomb.

Blitz closes with George and Rita hugging each other after all their experiences of the past two days.  This review is a little shorter than most of my treatments because there is not a lot of dialog in it despite being with our two heroes for much of the time.  There is character development, though, particularly for George, who comes to understand that the world is scary place outside of a mother’s embrace.  It may be cliché for a Catholic film critic to use this comparison, but I could not help but see Rita in a Marian light.  Although she is clearly not a virgin, the love that she has for her son is absolute.  In this context, one of the boys from the train has some important advice for George.  George explains how he had been cross with his mother before he left, and is told that he will be forgiven for whatever he said.  Unfortunately, humans are often reticent to give blanket forgiveness for offenses, but the relief mother and son feel at the end is evident.  That kind of love is Christ-like.  It is also something needed in this film.  What is less Christ-like is the way people treat one another throughout these events.  It is monstrous what Albert and his gang are doing, especially since they force a boy to help them.  What is worse, though, is the prevalence of racism.  Indeed, it has a negative impact on George.  From losing his father to dealing with bullies, his experience with racism toughens him at a far too young age.  What conquers those moments is love.  We see this a couple times.  One I would like to highlight is Ife.  George witnesses Ife standing up for what is right and encouraging people to get along in the face of London’s destruction.  It is seeing Ife’s example that gets George to admit for the first time that he is black.  We are all God’s children regardless of who we are.  Still, nothing can top the final scene.  Rita wraps George in a blanketed hug, and it reminds me of a prayer I say every day called “The Prayer to Take Authority.”  When it comes to the Marian portion, it asks that we be wrapped in the mantle of her love.  I often picture this much as we see at the conclusion.  God desires to do the same for all of us one day.

And today is the day that I recommend Blitz to you.  Despite the brevity of this review, there is a lot to be gained from watching it, but it should be approached cautiously.  While viewing it, I had inklings that this could be a horror flick.  What is shown is an honest, if horrifying account of what Londoners endured during World War II.  I purposely used the word “honest” because while George and Rita are fictional, the scene of the devastated night club actually happened.  If you can bear such parts, then you have a good film on your hands.