Steve McQueen Says People “Weren't Ready" for ‘Widows': “It Was Ahead of the Curve"

Steve McQueen's first three films ("Hunger," "Shame,” "12 Years A Slave”) were all acclaimed. Then came “Widows,” which, truth be told, garnered some positive reviews, but maybe not as enthusiastic as McQueen’s previous films.

With "Widows", McQueen entered the realm of “mainstream” filmmaking. Distributed by 21st Century Fox, this was a genre film that sometimes bit off more than it could chew. In “Widows," McQueen tried to bend genre cliches backward and invent a new kind of heist picture, one unlike any we'd seen before, and the results, although ambitious and exciting, might not have made for a film that totally gelled together.

Speaking at the BFI London Film Festival, where his “Blitz” is set to world premiere this evening, McQueen tackled the reception that “Widows” received upon release, albeit in very cryptic fashion. I wish he could have expanded more on what he meant when stating that people “weren’t ready” for it:

It was ahead of the curve […] People weren’t ready yet. They just weren’t ready. It’s all about timing because if I made that movie today it would be different and the people behind the machine would do something different.

This isn’t the first time McQueen tackles the polarized reaction to “Widows.” Five years ago, he mentioned the inherent racism and sexism he was reading in some of the film's reviews.

“Through the critique of this movie, I’ve seen sexism in a way and racism in a way, which is interesting, even if it’s a positive review,” McQueen said. “People don’t even notice that, but when you’ve got 90% of the critics are white males, that’s what happens.”

He went on to add, “we need more women directors. We need more black directors,” McQueen said. “We need more of a diversity across the board of representations within movies as well as critics.”

“Widows” tackled three women, played by Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Elizabeth Debicki, in debt because of their dead husbands' criminal activities as high-end robbers, and hunted by the mobsters (led by a terrifying Daniel Kaluuya). They decide to try and pull off a daring heist to pay back the hustlers that are after them.

Written by Gillian Flynn (a mistake), McQueen, working fast and furious, delivered a messy, and not always coherent, vision of an America at war with itself. The filmmaking was great, but the script was, at times, too convoluted.

McQueen used every stylistic trick in the book: flashbacks, flash-forwards, long takes, wide shots, cross pans, subplot upon subplot. It’s his refusal to adhere to convention that saved the film for me, even when it, at times, veered into incoherence.