Director Steve McQueen Shows War through Child’s Eyes in New Film ‘Blitz’

 This image released by Apple TV+ shows Saoirse Ronan, left, and Elliott Heffernan in a scene from "Blitz." (Apple TV+ via AP)
This image released by Apple TV+ shows Saoirse Ronan, left, and Elliott Heffernan in a scene from "Blitz." (Apple TV+ via AP)
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Director Steve McQueen Shows War through Child’s Eyes in New Film ‘Blitz’

 This image released by Apple TV+ shows Saoirse Ronan, left, and Elliott Heffernan in a scene from "Blitz." (Apple TV+ via AP)
This image released by Apple TV+ shows Saoirse Ronan, left, and Elliott Heffernan in a scene from "Blitz." (Apple TV+ via AP)

Oscar winner Steve McQueen had long wanted to make a movie about the Blitz - Germany's wartime aerial bombing of British cities - but it was seeing a photo of a Black boy waiting to be evacuated that inspired him to explore the theme through a child's eyes.

His film "Blitz" is based on thorough research and true events, the British director of "12 Years a Slave" and "Hunger" told Reuters in an interview.

While researching another project, he came across the photo of the boy at a train station - one of hundreds of thousands of British children to be evacuated from towns and cities during World War Two.

The film stars Saoirse Ronan as Rita, a Londoner who sends her son George, played by newcomer Elliott Heffernan, to the countryside for safety during the war. But George is determined to return home despite the dangers ahead.

Many of the characters and events George encounters are based on extensive research and documented by author Joshua Levine, who joined the project as a historical adviser, said McQueen.

"I thought, 'you've got to get it right'," McQueen said.

"In fact, the research sort of just propelled me and inspired me to the story and George's odyssey through London at that time. It was exciting because you found all these characters, all these facts, which most people unfortunately didn't know, and you want to sort of illuminate them on screen."

The Blitz - from the German word Blitzkrieg, or "lightning war" - lasted from Sept. 1940 until May 1941. For Britons it conjures up images of Londoners huddling in underground shelters and rallying to battle blazes and rescue people from the rubble.

McQueen said he had discovered a diverse, "quite cosmopolitan" London through his research.

"There was a large Chinese community and there was a Black presence. There was all kinds of presence here in London. I wasn't trying to push some kind of narrative. It was just what one found within the sort of everyday of London," he said.

Like George, 11-year-old Heffernan embarked on a transformative journey with the movie.

"It was a big adventure being on my first film, seeing how films are made and going out on different locations," said Heffernan, who was nine at the time of shooting.

The movie also proved new territory for four-time Oscar-nominee Ronan, who spent months working with a vocal coach to prepare for scenes which see her singing live.

"It's the kind of thing I've always been terrified to do in front of everyone, but I've always wanted to do it," Ronan, 30, told Reuters.

"It was incredible to see how strong you can become at something that you're just not a professional at after a few months. It gave me a lot of confidence."

"Blitz" is out in select cinemas on Nov. 1 and will stream on Apple TV+ from Nov. 22.



Tim Burton Talks about His Dread of AI as an Exhibition of His Work Opens in London

 A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)
A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)
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Tim Burton Talks about His Dread of AI as an Exhibition of His Work Opens in London

 A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)
A member of staff poses at The World of Tim Burton exhibition at the Design Museum, in London, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP)

The imagination of Tim Burton has produced ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits – all on display at an exhibition that is opening in London just in time for Halloween.

But you know what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.

Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that had used AI to blend his drawings with Disney characters “really disturbed me.”

“It wasn’t an intellectual thought — it was just an internal, visceral feeling,” Burton told reporters during a preview of “The World of Tim Burton” exhibition at London’s Design Museum. “I looked at those things and I thought, ‘Some of these are pretty good.’ ... (But) it gave me a weird sort of scary feeling inside.”

Burton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because “once you can do it, people will do it.” But he scoffed when asked if he’d use the technology in this work.

“To take over the world?” he laughed.

The exhibition reveals Burton to be an analogue artist, who started off as a child in the 1960s experimenting with paints and colored pencils in his suburban Californian home.

“I wasn’t, early on, a very verbal person,” Burton said. “Drawing was a way of expressing myself.”

Decades later, after films including “Edward Scissorhands,” “Batman,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Beetlejuice,” his ideas still begin with drawing. The exhibition includes 600 items from movie studio collections and Burton's personal archive, and traces those ideas as they advance from sketches through collaboration with set, production and costume designers on the way to the big screen.

London is the exhibition’s final stop on a decade-long tour of 14 cities in 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded with 90 new objects for its run in the British capital, where Burton has lived for a quarter century.

The show includes early drawings and oddities, including a competition-winning “crush litter” sign a teenage Burton designed for Burbank garbage trucks. There’s also a recreation of Burton’s studio, down to the trays of paints and “Curse of Frankenstein” mug full of pencils.

Alongside hundreds of drawings, there are props, puppets, set designs and iconic costumes, including Johnny Depp’s “Edward Scissorhands” talons and the black latex Catwoman costume worn by Michelle Pfeiffer in “Batman.”

“We had very generous access to Tim’s archive in London, stuffed full of thousands of drawings, storyboards from stop-motion films, sketches, character notes, poems,” said exhibition curator Maria McLintock. “And how to synthesize such a wide ranging and meandering career within one exhibition was a fun challenge — but definitely a challenge.”

Seeing it has not been a wholly fun experience for Burton, who said he’s unable to look too closely at the items on display.

“It’s like seeing your dirty laundry put on the walls,” he said. “It’s quite amazing. It’s a bit overwhelming.”

Burton, whose long-awaited horror-comedy sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” opened at the Venice Film Festival in August, is currently filming the second series of Netflix’ Addams Family-themed series “Wednesday.”

These days he is a major Hollywood director whose American gothic style has spawned an adjective – “Burtoneqsue.” But he still feels like an outsider.

“Once you feel that way, it never leaves you,” he said.

“Each film I did was a struggle,” he added, noting that early films like “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” from 1985 and “Beetlejuice” in 1988 received some negative reviews. “It seems like it was a pleasant, fine, easy journey, but each one leaves its emotional scars.”

McLintock said Burton “is a deeply emotional filmmaker."

“I think that’s what drew me to his films as a child,” she said. "He really celebrates the misunderstood outcast, the benevolent monster. So it’s been quite a weird but fun experience spending so much time in his brain and his creative process.

“His films are often called dark,” she added. “I don’t agree with that. And if they are dark, there’s a very much a kind of hope in the darkness. You always want to hang out in the darkness in his films.”