I found Steve McQueen’s revisionist tale of life for one family during the German bombardment of London to be slick and well-made but surprisingly unmoving; the concentration on terrors domestic rather than foreign is of course the whole point but takes a little getting used to. Musically, there are two elements here – first, period songs and source music provided by Nicholas Britell. This is amazingly authentic-sounding (though even I’m not old enough to be able to rate its authenticity from my own experience), with big-band and sometimes lighter jazz elements evoking the music enjoyed by high society at the time. It’s all a matter of taste though and it’s certainly not the sort of music I would want to listen to on its own, effective though it undoubtedly is within the context of the film.

The score is an entirely different animal. Composed by Hans Zimmer from the perspective of the boy at the heart of the story, it is a child’s-eye view of war and very much focused on the terror he experienced. As such, it is frequently very uncomfortable to listen to, with darkest strains of emotion coming through the string-based ensemble. Three tracks stand out as listening experiences: the almost macabre “Munitionettes”, the dazzling “An Adventure for Children”, a kaleidoscopic piece with all sorts of colours coming together and separating again as it progresses and the much more languid “Doing Rounds” which is the softest, most conventional piece in the score. There’s no room here for a traditional type of “theme” which is probably another layer to the score’s purpose of coming from within the jumbled mind of a child going through hell – it’s an intelligently-crafted if brief piece of work which works very well in the film. On the album, the two styles are so disparate that I wonder if it wouldn’t have worked better to present them separately (which is of course very easy to do yourself) – it’s not one I’m likely to revisit too often away from the film, but there’s no denying how effectively it achieves its main purpose.

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