'War is madness': Steve McQueen and Saoirse Ronan on Britishness, trauma and new drama Blitz

“We base a lot of our national identity on the Blitz and the Second World War. But we know more about the Tudors than about the Blitz.”

Steve McQueen’s latest film challenges us to take a new look at notions of Britishness and the reality of war.

But the seed for Blitz was sewn by one single image. The Oscar-winning filmmaker and Turner Prize-winning artist was deep into his research phase on Small Axe, his groundbreaking series of films for the BBC, released in 2020 when he saw the photograph that became the catalyst for an entire story, unlocking a long-held desire to tell a story set during the war.

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

“I came across this image of a young Black boy on a platform with a cap on and a massive suitcase, about to be evacuated,” McQueen explains.

“I had wanted to tell a story about the Blitz and the Second World War. But I wasn’t interested in Churchill or Truman or Monty. I was interested in the people on the ground. People who had lived through this narrative.”

Hundreds of war films document the politicians and the pilots, the spies and the secret agents. But in Blitz, McQueen views the conflict through the eyes of a young mixed-race boy from East London.

“War is madness. It’s madness,” McQueen continues. “What’s that definition of madness where you repeat something that doesn’t make sense? So the whole idea of making Blitz through this child’s eyes was to amplify the situation. I want the audience to be seeing things, in a way, for the first time.”

When George (impressive newcomer Elliott Heffernan) jumps off the train evacuating him to the countryside, he begins a quest to find his way back home to East London, his mother, munitions worker Rita (Saoirse Ronan), and his piano-playing grandfather (Paul Weller).

“London was my childhood,” says McQueen, who comes to Blitz off the back of documentary film Occupied City, looking at the war’s impact on his adopted home city of Amsterdam.

“There was always this mystery. Every day you would see buildings that were missing. So this is about the ghosts of the past.”

• Grenfell by Steve McQueen review: A powerful and haunting reminder
• The Gold star Jack Lowden: Saoirse Ronan does a better Scottish accent than me

But Blitz is also about the present. Good historical films always are, in some way. And, from 12 Years A Slave to Hunger to Shame, McQueen only makes great films.

“We are still living with the trauma of the Second World War and the Blitz to this day,” he continues. “You have all of the stiff upper lip and ‘keep calm and carry on’ stuff – and these things come out in ways which are not positive.

“The race recent race riots and the immigration situation. All these things are in Blitz loud and clear. We base our national identity on the Second World War. To look at it now, through today’s lenses, is very important.

“And Blitz echoes what is going on in the world. In the wars in Ukraine and Somalia and Palestine and Israel and elsewhere.”

‘What the hell are we doing?’

George’s hope and fear is mirrored across the world right now as displaced people flee conflict.

“All these children, all these children, all these children,” McQueen says. “Hopefully for the adults watching this film it is sobering to think, what the hell are we doing?”

Throughout Blitz, music is a place of refuge, a source of snatched moments of joy within the carnage and chaos and fear.

There is family fun around the piano when Gerald (Paul Weller) sings with his daughter and grandson as the film begins. In flashback, we step inside the joyous jazz club where Rita dances – in freedom – with George’s father. And we see Rita singing on a temporary stage in her munitions factory for BBC’s ‘Works Wonders’ radio programme – supported by her assembly line pals Tilda (Hayley Squires) and Doris (Erin Kellyman), who use the opportunity of a live broadcast to call for London Underground to open stations as shelters.

“It’s a celebration of life in the environment of death. And that’s what we do,” says McQueen.

“The music and the camaraderie and the celebration is such an important part of this picture. Because it was a huge part in people’s lives back then.”

Each of these moments are temporary. But they are vital. They show why life is worth living, why freedom is worth fighting for, why so many are risking so much for future generations.

They also make the moments of heartbreak more vivid. We see how institutionalised racism wrenched Rita’s love away. It’s a theme McQueen returns to often, across different countries and eras, such as Uprising, his Bafta-winning BBC documentary series about the New Cross Fire disaster, Black People’s Day Of Action, and the Brixton riots in 1981.

“George is from a predominantly working-class neighbourhood and I was interested in who he was and how that background affected him,” says McQueen.

We see George meet a range of characters on his homeward journey. There’s Ife (Benjamin Clémentine), the air raid fire warden whose kindness, as well as his position of authority, offers George a positive role model on their night walk (and sing) together.

“With Benjamin there’s a beauty about him,” says McQueen. “Not just physically, but he exudes a sense of love.

“The character is based on a guy called Ita Ekpenyon, a real air raid warden who patrolled the Marylebone area. The speech he gives in the shelter – ‘We are all equal members of this country. That’s what Hitler is doing, dividing people by religion and race’ – that was real.”

A Dickensian duo of grotesque corpse robbing siblings is played by Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke. “I got Kathy out of retirement and I was very grateful that she relented,” McQueen laughs. “I must have made her ears bleed, pleading down the phone. Working with her and Stephen Graham? My cup runneth over. These are authentic people. I’m not interested in stars, I’m interested in actors.

“Paul [Weller] wasn’t up for it at first, but we cajoled him a bit. And the results are amazing.”

Last time McQueen talked with the Big Issue, he spoke of the impact The Specials had on him as a teenager. Was he also a fan of The Jam?

“Not so much The Jam,” he says. “But the Style Council was my thing. My ears pricked up when The Jam released their last single, Beat Surrender. ‘Oh, hello!’ But then he went on to the Style Council and they were absolutely amazing. Long Hot Summer? Damn.

“But you get past all that and get on with it. Paul has such an amazing face, my god. He has lived and you can see that. When you have him on screen, you have this weight. Audiences aren’t stupid. You can’t lie to them.”

Saoirse Ronan was not looking for work when Blitz came along. The 30-year-old has been on a hot streak for years. She arrives in Blitz at the peak of her powers – and could be set for fifth and sixth Oscar nominations, Best Actress for The Outrun and Best Supporting Actress for Blitz. 

“I’d said to my agent that even when I’m desperate for a break, if Steve McQueen calls, obviously I’ll do it. And I still stand by that,” Ronan tells the Big Issue.

“So before I even read the script I wanted to be involved. The only thing I was hesitant about was knowing it was going to be set during the Second World War. I assumed it would run in a similar vein to pretty much every other film set during the war. But Steve turned that on its head and gave us insight into that period in a way only he could. So I knew it was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime job.

“He has such an unfiltered, honest air about him. It put me at ease very quickly. I felt instantly, as soon as we met in person, that we were on the same page. He was very open to me having an input in the shape of Rita’s arc. It’s disarming, almost, how willing he is to bring everyone into the fold.”

McQueen is equally complimentary. “Saoirse is an artist. She has this quality where she can do very little and say so much. And they all got on like a house on fire. Saoirse was 29, Elliot was nine and Paul was 65 or 66 at the time – and they loved each other. In a very equal manner – there was no hierarchy at all.”

Ronan was, she admits, more excited about singer Celeste being in the film than Paul Weller.

“I didn’t have any scenes with her, and I was devastated because I’m such a huge fan,” she says.

“But everyone was unbelievably excited to have Paul on set. Some of the older people were quite intimidated by the fact he was there. But he’s very normal, doesn’t take himself that seriously, and was very humble about what he was coming in to do.

“Because he was being asked to act and I was the ‘professional actor’, and I was being asked to do something I’m not comfortable with – singing – and he is a professional singer, we were there for each other. It was all very organic, family style. I loved it. My favourite element making the film was that I got to learn how to sing.”

The Blitz Spirit is invoked so often as to have become a cliche second only to Keep Calm and Carry On. The idea of thousands of working-class Londoners, gathered together in underground stations during air raids, singing away while London burned above them, has become adopted as a symbol of national resistance. A kind of Britishness to be celebrated.

The truth, as always, is much more complex.

‘There was lots of racism’

“It’s important to shatter this notion that the spirit of Britain was unwavering,” Ronan says. “There was a romanticised, glossed-over version of how people dealt with this incredibly tragic, chaotic time. To humanise that is so important.

“The fact that Elliot is also a little mixed-race boy, and that’s shining a light on how diverse the people were in London at that time – which has never been highlighted, their stories never told – is also incredibly powerful.”

McQueen agrees.

“Being a Black boy, at that time, wasn’t seen as positive at all. There was a lot of racism,” he says.

“As much as we were fighting this enemy at that time, we were fighting ourselves. And not just in the sense of racism, but also in the sense of people not getting into the underground shelters.”

Because shelter in Underground stations was initially denied. When the air raids began in September 1940, people died because working-class Londoners – who had nowhere to hide from the bombs – were not allowed to use these cavernous, empty stations during air raids.

“Churchill famously said he didn’t want people to cower. So people fought their way in to the underground,” says McQueen.

“Maybe a lot of people wouldn’t have known that. But people fought their way into get into the undergrounds. And that matters.

“What’s also interesting to me was people like Mickey Davies, who organised these shelters in the underground.

“Here’s this small person who was monumental during that time and I had never heard of him. Why? There should be a statue of him somewhere. But there isn’t. You didn’t have to dig too deep to find these stories. So why don’t we know about them?”

The contrast between the wealthy and those living in poverty is another parallel McQueen draws between then and now.

“My goodness, bloody gracious. It is huge – this gap between the haves and have nots, I’ve never seen it this bad,” he says. “And the lack of opportunities for working-class people to do anything – it’s almost like, ‘That’s your lot.’ I was very lucky. I got a grant to go to university and pay for my education. If I didn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

McQueen makes films that have a lasting impact. None more so than his Small Axe anthology. He is proud, he says, that they are showing Lovers Rock in parliament this month, while Red, White and Blue became the first film ever shown in Scotland Yard. Blitz should be seen in cinemas – but will arrive on Apple TV+ within weeks of release.

“I’m grateful people have responded the way they have to my films,” he says.

“With Blitz, I just wanted to make a movie that could be engaging and thrilling but was not blind to what was actually going on in London at that time.

“And it was very obvious what was going on at that time. I wasn’t, as my son would say, flexing. It is just how it was. It’s just telling the truth.”

Blitz is in cinemas now and on Apple TV+ from 22 November.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.