Who Is Steve McQueen Trying to Be?

At a recent preview screening in Toronto of Steve McQueen’s new movie, Blitz—a historical drama about a mother and son (played by Saoirse Ronan and Elliott Heffernan, respectively) who become separated during the German shelling of London in 1940—an audience member asked the filmmaker why he’d opted to provide a film so steeped in bleakness with a (relatively) happy ending. After a quizzical pause, McQueen—who tends to be hyper-ruminative when it comes to explaining his work—replied by saying that he didn’t think Blitz had a happy ending at all.