‘Britain and The Blitz’ Netflix Review - A Documentary that’s Both Tiring and Important

The Netflix documentary Britain and the Blitz opens with these words from Adolf Hitler: "Come what may, England will break down." If you are familiar with the real incident (the Blitz - named after the German word "blitzkrieg," meaning "lightning war" - was Germany's bombing campaign against the United Kingdom to break and demoralize the British population), you will smile and whisper, "What a clown, this Hitler." The British continued to be strong and united despite overwhelming destruction. Hitler failed, and Hitlers are bound to fail - sooner or later. With the rise of right-wing clowns around the world, one immediately starts thinking about other idiot rulers. Some have done tariff wars, some have actively promoted genocide, and some have chosen to address political rallies instead of talking to victims of a terrorist attack. You don't just watch a documentary called Britain and the Blitz; you see the tragedy of the modern world. Today, a movie like this is undoubtedly important - urgent even. That's because, despite living in a technologically advanced age where all the information is available at the tip of your fingers, many people have chosen to remain illiterate and dumb.

Britain and the Blitz consist of colorized and stunningly upscaled footage stitched together to form a coherent narrative of a historical war. The images tell a story, and the story has many threads. We "follow" Edith Heap (Plotter, RAF Debden), Richard (a firefighter), Joan (a woman who remembers being in a relationship with Rupert, her neighbor), and also get to hear accounts of ordinary citizens like Eric Brady (London Evacuee), Marie Price (Liverpool local), and Tom. One of them mentions seeing "fluffy clouds." Another expresses guilt over taking his mom to a shelter (the shelter got destroyed, leading to his mom's death). A factory worker, Frieda Anderson, talks about the thrill of "going somewhere" for war work. And Joan is quite open about her romantic entanglements, which are quite sexually charged. That's the most interesting thing about this documentary: It has a space for intimate confessions. Edith describes the physical features of her male colleagues and tells us how she fell in love with one of the men. Such confessions (and others) indicate that all these people who were caught in a hate storm were humans with goals, desires, feelings, and ambitions. In their hunger for domination and power, the Nazi regime destroyed innocent civilians who merely wanted to live normal lives with the people they loved.

Now, this might sound like a contradiction, but Britain and the Blitz, despite its technical achievement, is as tiring as a typical documentary with talking heads. The talking heads, in fact, are "integrated" into the events. Instead of constantly cutting to the shots of people sitting on a chair, we constantly hear their voices. Perhaps this is why this documentary is being defined as "immersive" by the filmmakers. Immersive it's not. Yet it's definitely worth watching for the stories it highlights and the high-quality images that present the effects of war with clarity and scope. These visuals are crucial at a time when many right-wing voices on social media amplify hate and, from the comfort of their air-conditioned rooms, call on soldiers to go to war. Knuckleheads, they are. Those who have never experienced pain and remain ignorant are often the ones screaming at the top of their lungs in support of mass destruction.

Final Score- [5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times