Beware False Prophets
My take on 28 Years Later
Note: This post contains spoilers for both 28 Years Later films.
The latest instalment of 28 Years Later is superb. The Bone Temple is another slap around the face paired with a quiet natural beauty that has set the tone of the series since 2002. Nia DaCosta is a fantastic director. If you haven’t seen Candyman yet, get going now. The writer, Alex Garland, is proving to be a master of dystopia. But not the dystopian robot future of something like The Terminator. Garland’s worlds feel close enough to touch, and it shakes me to the core.
What I am particularly enjoying in this new trilogy is the opportunity to hold up a mirror. By removing from the world everything that’s happened between the year 2002 to the present day, it forces us to study the gap between. A gap that can be too traumatic to face.
Twenty four years of change is reflected back at us through an apocalyptic world that’s holding the late 20th century as an ideal; when the world had an order, the Teletubbies were family viewing and the public had no idea that Jimmy Saville was a monster.
The clan of Jimmy’s; the head of which, Jimmy Crystal, sees himself a prophet. But just like his namesake he is a false one, administering abuse under the name of ‘charity’. When they appeared at the end of the first instalment, it was a completely wild way to finish. But on their return in The Bone Temple, the first thing we see is a sign saying “no children beyond this point” before we head into a meeting of the clan. It’s a chilling reminder that they have no idea who their idol was. And neither did we.
Through our binoculars we observe Dr Ian Kelson as he appears from his bunker, iodine stained and contemplative.1
At once eccentric and absurd in his ivory tower of skulls, look closer and he is as much the cure as the medicine he gives to Samson.
Dr Ian is kind and thoughtful. He will speak to the infected as much as the uninfected; finding common ground between devil worshippers while still managing to keep his morals intact. He spares Samson when he realises that there is hope. He’s pragmatic when he realises that Spike’s mother won’t make it.
He is the truth in it all. The silly, dancing doctor with photos pinned in the bunker while he builds his forest of bones.
Then we come to the ending of The Bone Temple. Cillian Murphy (Jim) is testing his children on 20th century geopolitics. It was a time when we made totalitarianism and populism extinct through international law and sharing common interests.
Jim looking back on our late century Utopia stands to highlight how quickly those ideals have changed. Progressivism, democracy and the truth are built on paper thin ground. To run a world on the contrary was naive.
We are staring down the barrel of it all once again. Just like the virus, division needs an antidote.
The final decision in the film: do we help or not? is another nod to the individualism of our age. We’ve grown accustomed to characters looking after themselves in most movies today, but especially in this series. Jim deciding to help as though it is the only answer is a hint to what Garland, DaCosta and Boyle think the antidote may be.
I’ve titled this post Beware False Prophets. While directly I'm referencing the Jimmy’s in the film, I’m also thinking about our nostalgia for the past. The 80’s and 90’s are increasingly being seen as the last time things were good in the world. Before 9/11, before the internet, when the world was still ok.
But that version of the past is just not true. The pressures we all face today are a direct result of choices that were made then. The house prices, the cost of living, the division, the individualism. They were sown by the same people who want to take us back to when Brits were Brits and a pint cost 3p.
Beware false prophets.
Listen to the people you don’t understand.
That’s what this film is saying to me.
What does it say to you?
Thanks so much for reading. Please do leave a comment if you’d like and share this article with someone if you think they would be interested.
Gareth
As an aside, I’d like to add that Ralph Fiennes is up there with the greatest to ever do it isn’t he? He’s beguiling in this.