The silence and the fury of Steve McQueen’s Grenfell

With­in the pris­tine white walls of the Ser­pen­tine Gallery set in the man­i­cured seren­i­ty of Hyde Park, there is anoth­er Lon­don – one that was left to burn. In a 24 minute film that screens through­out the day, we see footage cap­tured by Steve McQueen as he sur­veys the charred remains of North Kensington’s Gren­fell Tow­er six months after a fire that raged for 60 hours and end­ed up tak­ing 72 lives. 

This is an act of remem­brance for the dead that also serves as a J’accuse aimed at politi­cians who, despite urgent warn­ings that the cladding used to line the tow­er was unsafe, did noth­ing to inter­vene before the avoid­able tragedy of 14 June, 2017.

McQueen has forged a rep­u­ta­tion as an artist, and then as a film­mak­er, for uncom­pro­mis­ing visions that com­pel audi­ences to push through what is com­fort­able to see bru­tal­i­ty and injus­tice. His work has a corol­lary that can some­times flow through pow­er­ful­ly con­fronta­tion­al works of art, which is to say: there is a strange hope that comes from look­ing despair in the eye, espe­cial­ly when we do so en masse.

Gren­fell may be the most pow­er­ful film he has ever made. Run­ning to only 24 min­utes, its stark­ness is its strength. 

The facts of a British tragedy that his­to­ry will con­jure in one dread-fuelled word, like Hills­bor­ough, is not the focus of the film. The lives lost, the alarms that went unheed­ed, the vio­lent indif­fer­ence of the polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment before, dur­ing and after, are made avail­able to vis­i­tors through exhi­bi­tion literature. 

But the film itself, like its sub­ject, is exoskele­tal. It is a silent stock-tak­ing of the tow­er six months after the fire. The footage is so metic­u­lous­ly obser­va­tion­al that it could be sub­mit­ted as foren­sic legal evi­dence. In a sense, this is its pur­pose: to ush­er the pub­lic into a room to wit­ness the after­math of a crime scene, so that we will car­ry with us the ques­tion of what jus­tice will follow.

The film begins, and Gren­fell Tow­er is approached slow­ly as a drone-mount­ed cam­era glides through the skies over west Lon­don on a crisp Decem­ber day. We are aer­i­al tourists, not­ing Wem­b­ley sta­di­um, and – if you’re me – real­is­ing your knowl­edge of cap­i­tal sky­scapes could stand to be improved. The footage seems so nor­mal, almost like a Vis­it Lon­don infomer­cial, and it would be peace­ful if only we did not know where the drone was headed.

McQueen is in no rush. The repet­i­tive pat­tern of snaking roads, hous­es, tiny cars and trees cre­ates an expec­tant lull. The rel­a­tive lack of visu­al stim­u­la­tion makes you aware of where you are and who else is in the dark­ened audi­to­ri­um bear­ing wit­ness. The watch of the woman beside me ticked inside my head, a baby gur­gled, some­one cleared their throat. These small sounds only served to under­score that, oth­er­wise, we were sat in a fune­re­al hush.

Then we see it, a black­ened pyre flanked by nor­mal oper­a­tional build­ings like flats, a school, a busi­ness under a rail­way arch. The cam­era moves slow­ly but sure­ly, push­ing in… and in… and in. The ambi­ent bird­song fades out. The tow­er looks like a war­zone once the shells have stopped and the bod­ies have been tak­en away. The mon­strous­ness of its appear­ance is all the more shock­ing because it is incon­gru­ous with the rest of the build­ings. It looks like a tar­get and, indi­rect­ly, it was.

In the depths of grief, there are no words. For the length of Gren­fell, there are no words. McQueen under­stands in his bones that every­thing he wants to com­mu­ni­cate is in the images themselves. 

On the Ser­pen­tine web­site, press seek­ing images to accom­pa­ny their reviews are offered a bland aer­i­al shot with a note that reads: ​“The film still has been issued to be as sen­si­tive to the bereaved fam­i­lies, sur­vivors and the com­mu­ni­ty as pos­si­ble in the media cov­er­age of the exhi­bi­tion. Please use this still to accom­pa­ny arti­cles on Steve McQueen’s work Gren­fell. Please refrain from using oth­er stock images of the Tow­er, espe­cial­ly those on the night of the dis­as­ter and of the uncov­ered tow­er to be respect­ful to the Gren­fell com­mu­ni­ty as these images can be distressing.”

This is a film that speaks a visu­al lan­guage that is more sen­si­tive and impact­ful than the bar­rage of news­reel trau­ma most of us asso­ciate with tragedy. In an effort to spare fam­i­lies, sur­vivors and the com­mu­ni­ty, McQueen has refined his already pow­er­ful mode of sto­ry­telling into some­thing that holds deep com­pas­sion for a view­er­ship blud­geoned by vio­lence. He is say­ing: you’ve already seen enough blood­shed, you don’t need to see any more. Wide­ly known as the direc­tor of such vis­cer­al fic­tion­alised biopics as Hunger and 12 Years A Slave, this show­cas­es the dif­fer­ent side of his instincts that emerge when doc­u­ment­ing sto­ries still raw in liv­ing memory.

The cam­era cir­cles the tow­er in increas­ing­ly tight cir­cles, still mov­ing with a delib­er­ate and assured slow­ness. The clos­er we get, the more there is to see: pathol­o­gists in white on the scaf­fold­ing; a lift inch­ing up and down the out­side of the tow­er; bags of refuse stacked up inside; the begin­nings of a cov­er start­ing at the bot­tom of a tow­er; win­dows that are smashed up and charred; win­dows that are papered over and white. Each audi­ence mem­ber brings their own con­text and their own ques­tions to these scenes of qui­et indus­try on a site that was recent­ly a mass grave. 

When the film ends, the ush­er asks if we’re all okay and says peo­ple can stay and sit awhile longer if they want. The screen­ing room leads into a room where one wall has a list of 72 names. I speak each one aloud in my mind.

“I feared once the tow­er was cov­ered up, it would only be a mat­ter of time before it fad­ed from the public’s mem­o­ry. In fact there were peo­ple who were count­ing on that being the case,” McQueen wrote in the exhi­bi­tion introduction. 

The poet Christi­na Ros­set­ti once had this to say: ​“And if thou wilt, remem­ber. And if thou wilt, forget.”

Thanks to Steve McQueen, more of us wilt remem­ber. The caul­dron of polit­i­cal clar­i­ty and per­son­al grief in Gren­fell makes it a vig­il that is far from over.

Gren­fell by Steve McQueen plays for free at the Ser­pen­tine Gallery, Lon­don until 10 May, 2023. Free tick­ets can be booked in advance online.