“It made me care about strangers.” That may be the most important thing Gareth says about 28 Years Later. Jett and Gareth explore a startlingly beautiful horror film whose cinematic ancestry reaches toward Boorman, Powell and Pressburger, Mike Leigh, and Lynne Ramsay, and whose real subject may be the persistence of human care.
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Speaker 2 (02:51.662)
You know, Gareth, in the US right now, we're in a time of explicit state-sanctioned cruelty, I would say. And I think one response, my friend, to that could be advocating for creating extreme beauty. And that's what we get with 28 years later, extreme beauty. I wept watching this film.
28 years later, Extreme Beauty in nine years from now could be the tagline for this show having lasted that long. But at the moment, it's the title of a zombie movie. And as you know, dear listener, I don't watch many horror movies, but for you, Jet, I'm willing to make that sacrifice. I'm looking forward to talking with it. Earth Higgins.
Do you want to take that? So this is the pre-music thing. Do you want to take that? I'm looking forward talking to it because you kind of broke up there whenever you're ready.
Speaker 1 (03:49.952)
You want me to just say I'm looking forward to talk to you about it? I'm Higgins.
this is the pre thing. is the pre. This is not the show. This is the yeah. Okay. Yeah. Whenever you read
Yeah, I know, I know.
Speaker 1 (04:05.198)
I'm looking forward to talking with you about it. I'm Gareth Higgins. Are we doing that bit now? No.
So I don't think we should introduce ourselves because that's after the music.
okay okay let's start again tell me what you want me to do
You just say I'm looking.
Speaker 2 (04:23.758)
You could say you're looking forward to talking about it and mention the name of the film if you want to.
Speaker 2 (04:35.31)
300 episodes, 303. We'll get there.
Yes. Looking forward to talking with you about it. 28 years later, zombies, islands and wraith finds covered in iodine.
All right, so now we start the show. Okay.
my goodness, Gareth. Like you said, Ralph Fiennes covered an iodine. I can't think of a better cinematic experience this year. This is the Film Talk, folks. I'm Jett Low.
I'm Gareth Higgins, the conversation never ends. I can think of a better cinematic experience this year, but I probably can't think of a more gripping one. It's 28 years later, directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland, a sequel, of course, to 28 Days Later, that sort of conveniently forgets that there already was a sequel called 28 Weeks Later.
Speaker 1 (05:36.162)
This is set in a disunited kingdom, Great Britain particularly, where 28 years after the original Rage virus has more than decimated the population, we've got a commune of people living on a Scottish island. They have turned themselves into hunter-gatherers, foragers. They've got pretty strong security techniques.
and they look after each other in an interdependent way. And the premise is that a father played by Aaron Taylor Johnson and his son Spike played by the brilliant, brilliant, brilliant Alfie Williams, one of the child performances for the ages, go out on their first hunt trying to teach Alfie how to be prepared for this new and difficult world in which they all live. And I believe
we have a clip.
Okay, you're totally frozen, maybe you wanna turn off your camera if your bandwidth is really slow.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:44.086)
I did, yeah, but it's not the best. that's a lovely photo.
Did you hear me though?
Speaker 1 (06:51.798)
Okay. All right. Good. I believe we have a We have a clip.
We do have a clip in this clip. We've got the wonderful, wonderful Ray Fines. His voice is excerpted. This is from a trailer. He's kind of given a little bit of business about his worldview. Let's listen in.
Speaker 2 (07:17.006)
Whenever you're ready.
And there will be, dear listener, be spoilers from here on out. I find spoilers for horror movies to be helpful to me because my nervous system has a little bit of a challenge when I go to see films that have jump scares in them. But I really wanted to see this film. I like Danny Boyle a lot. think he often doesn't get the credit he deserves for being an innovative visual stylist. And his films are kind of like if you were to somehow merge
music videos with stained glass windows. And I mean that with all seriousness. In the past, stained glass windows were the icons through which the people could see the world and see themselves. And that's what I think this film is most like. It's actually like a very intense at times, but also sometimes a really beautifully slow paced film at times.
that's like a contemplative icon or a stained glass window about the idea of whether or not nationalism can save us. And I said there'd be spoilers. The answer is no. Nationalism cannot save us. Community can save us. And even when we think we need to erect strong boundaries to protect the community, we need to be prepared for the unexpected. We need to be prepared for
surprises, dare I say it, new life coming from unexpected places. It's also a pro-feminist horror movie and a pro-human horror movie. The humanity in this film is palpable. The scares and the grief and the lamentation in this film is the kind of scares, grief and lamentation that makes you want to love people more.
Speaker 1 (09:18.06)
We see lots of, there's lots of kind of intercut footage. Some of it appears to be archival documentary footage of kind of military formation rallies. And some of it is from the kind of nation building myth making films like Laurence Olivier's Henry the fifth. And, you know, it's clunky. That's not, that's, it's not subtle, but it's trying to kind of drive you to think in the way that stained glass windows often aren't subtle. You know, the 12 stations of the cross.
aren't subtle, they're one sentence or one phrase at a time. So it makes you think about how nations can crumble. And the only thing holding us together is love. The great Ralph Fiennes, if you watch, the whole time I'm watching his character, he's kind of like the mad genius who's created his own little, I don't know, you would like an open air hermitage that I kept thinking about his character in Conclave watching this, because they're both priests, right?
They're both medicine men. And what he's what he's doing is memento mori. He refers he says this twice. You know, Latin for remember that you will die. And then he chases it, as it were, later in the film with memento. I think he says memento amor. Remember that you have loved, remember that you can love. And so in some sense, it's sentimental and the best.
sense of the word, deep emotion. It made me care about the people around me. It made me care about the strangers around me too. And beyond that, and I'll finish my opening thoughts with this, Jett, looking forward to hearing what you have to say. As a movie for a movie lover, what a great night out at the cinema this was. Ridley Scott's Robin Hood. know one of the
films that you enjoyed the most in the earlier iteration of the film talk. The films of Powell and Pressburger, that kind of garish colour in Powell and Pressburger, particularly the life and death of Colonel Blimp in a matter of life and death. Mike Lee, Lynne Ramsay and Ken Loach's what they call kitchen sink dramas, which is a way of dismissing them, but they're deadly serious films about people on the fringes of security and most of all.
Speaker 1 (11:44.271)
maybe the film talks favorite director certainly one of the directors of all time.
Is it gonna be
Are you thinking of Excalibur? Are you thinking of Excalibur and John Borman?
I'm thinking of the Emerald Forest. I'm thinking of Deliverance. just to say one thing about Deliverance, because I know Deliverance kicks up some very bleak thoughts in people's minds and living as I do part of the year in Appalachia. There's a lot of Appalachia people who are deeply offended by Deliverance. And I don't want to second guess them on that. will just...
remind people that deliverance ends with the two surviving city boys, think it's Ronnie Cox and Burt Reynolds, being rescued by a dirt poor Appalachian family who take them in for the night because it's just what you do. And something happens at the end of this film where people take another human being in at personal risk because it's just what you do. Yes, John, John Berman is all over this film.
Speaker 1 (12:50.958)
And last but not least, another I don't know that he was going to I don't know that we use the word great in aesthetic terms, but certainly a notable English minister of the film, that is Benny Hill, who whose let's say I was surprised, I was surprised to see the spirit of Benny Hill show up at the end of this film and a kind of a comic keystone cops.
action sequence. It's important to have this caveat before we go any further in film. is, it's the first of a prospective trilogy. The second film's already been made. They don't know if they're going to make the third one. They've got to wait and see how well this does at the part. It may not fulfill all its ideas because there are some things that don't work in this film, but I'm sort of going to hold my peace on that until the
the next two have come out because they may resolve later on. All that to say, I don't like horror movies. I loved this one. I loved this one. Yes, it's a horror film. Yes, it's a horror film. Yeah, it's good zombies. I mean, of course it fits within the horror genre, but I have a broad definition of that genre. think Robert Redford's Quiz Show is a horror movie. So we'll leave
Is it a horror film? don't know.
There's one jump scare.
Speaker 2 (14:16.098)
So what you're saying is if if Rafe Fiennes is in it is what you're telling me. See the fines. You know.
Listen, listen, did you watch The Grand Budapest Hotel yet as you promised the listener you would?
Don't try to guilt trip me about watching the film. I'm busy seeing something. I'm busy rewatching Sinners.
I'll get to it. I do want to thank you for encouraging me to watch this because I probably wouldn't have seen it because it does activate my nervous system in a way that's intensely uncomfortable for me and it was so worth it.
fantastic film. I'm going to disagree with you about the horror films, but I appreciate you have that rule that if you see The Fines, then you know you're in for a horror film, good times. By the way, Ray Fines, how wonderful in this film, Gareth, dear listener, how wonderful it is to not have, let me finish for a second. I'll let you go on. How wonderful it is for him. You're expecting him to be insane.
Speaker 1 (15:17.756)
Very, very.
Speaker 2 (15:27.502)
Right? You're expecting he's going to be this evil malevolent character in the last third of the film. And instead, he's possibly one of the most sane characters you'll see in recent cinema. He's kind of like the anti-Kurtz, right? Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. He's so gentle, so soothing, so clear. He's what Kurtz thought he was. I mean, the way that Ralph Fiennes says, the magic of the placenta. I mean, that right there, that's worth the price of.
yeah!
Speaker 2 (15:55.786)
Admission. This is a beautiful film, folks. It contains two of the most stunning sequences I've seen in years. One of them is characters on a causeway at night, their feet are in water and we see the sky above them. Yeah, in Northern Lights. Yeah, you watch the end credits, you realize they hired astrophotographers. These are real plates, right? Because they actually hired people to go out there and shoot.
the sky at night and it just comes through. It says that we are in a magical world, that if we open ourselves up to possibility, we can live in a world of magic and wonder. And there's another sequence in which, again, no spoilers, a boy turns the skull of his mother to face the sunrise. And I started crying when he did this. These are extraordinary scenes in cinema. And so every few minutes there is a really striking scene.
We have, and this is sort of an I Am Legend thing, we can talk about end of the world films, there's a scene in which, I guess we can call them zombies, whatever you wanna call them. Woman gives birth, which is really stunning. You can see the beginning of a new culture because they're not just mindless zombies now, there's a family of zombies we see very clearly, and this is reminiscent of the great Richard Matheson's book, I Am Legend, which was made into The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man and then Will Smith's version.
And I will say, spoiler, skip ahead a minute if you want to hear about this, But one of the great things about Matheson's I Am Legend, the most famous thing is the ending. And the ending is always what they don't include in the movies. That's the reason to make the movies for the ending. Because in the end of I Am Legend, reason it's called that is he realizes our protagonist who's been killing all the zombies or vampires or whatever you want to call them, the bad guys, he realizes he's the last man on earth. He realizes that he's the bad guy. He's the monster. Because to the vampires, he's killing them off. He will...
They didn't become myth. He will become a legend as like as the boogeyman as the bad guy and we get
Speaker 1 (17:56.302)
He can... He also has the power to do the opposite of killing them.
That's right. And we don't get those in the film adaptations.
No, no, in the Omega, you get that in the Omega man. he doesn't, don't think he, Charlton Heston doesn't realize cause he's dead by the time he starts, he saves.
He's Christ-like. arms are spread out. Charlton Heston, there's a man with a healthy ego.
You
Speaker 2 (18:27.242)
Anyway, you we talked about, you mentioned the films of John Borman, whose film seemed so tied to the land. To me, you could call this movie England, the movie, right? Because you've got, you've got this sort of sense of the ancient pagan gods. have the masks that are right out of Wicker Man. Watching this reminded me when went to Glastonbury, dear listener, the big musical festival in England. And when I went there, I realized it wasn't a music festival. It takes place on a huge undulating hills of a farm. It felt like the meeting.
the gathering of the indigenous tribes, the native tribes of the nation. That's how it feels watching this movie, Because Boyle obviously is a go-to England guy, right? He did the Olympics, the big opening spectacular. And you can feel the Englishness. I mean, it starts with the Teletubbies and ends with Jimmy Savile. So it's imbued with this sense of English culture that is really very striking in our world of corporate cinema.
Does that make sense, Gareth?
Yeah, does. you know, Danny Boyle's Englishness.
is, you know, it's an Englishness of the people. One thing like this is a fairly mundane thing. Danny Boyle was offered a knighthood for having designed that truly astonishing work of art, the Olympics opening ceremony in 2012. If you haven't seen that, dear listener, go find it. It's an incredible, incredible, incredible, incredible,
Speaker 1 (19:59.052)
just the stuff that usually gets celebrated in nationalistic flag waving trumpet blaring celebratory moments. They had a whole dance sequence dedicated to the National Health Service. So Danny Boyle is it's Englishness of the people and he turned down the knighthood because he said
I can only take it that they were going to give it to everybody else who was involved in the Olympics opening ceremony. It's like it's a socialist film. 28 years later, it's a socialist film as well. It starts in this interdependent commune. I do want to mention someone else we haven't talked about yet. That's Jodie Comer, who's one of my favourite kind of rising actresses. She was magnificent in Ridley Scott's The Last.
And in this film, she plays, I think, one of the hardest characters to play. That's someone who's dying, someone whose mind is going, someone who is sometimes lucid and who has to be both frightened and frightening at different times. There's a nod that she gives in this film. That's probably my moment of the year in cinema.
thus far where she gives permission to someone to do something. We sort of assume he's going to be evil. Even after we've had a scene or two with him where he appears to be gentle, we kind of assume, his true colors are going to reveal. Neither of those things happened. Now, I think he may be a bit bleak. Well.
I think him being a bit bleak, character is a totally appropriate response to the situation that they find themselves in. When you're surrounded with thousands of skeletons...
Speaker 1 (21:58.74)
Well, yes, you're right. You're right. Yes, yes. Yes. Fair enough. But there are some things in that sequence that happen little too quickly for me. There's also one of the things that doesn't work is this is that iodine or iodine. I don't I don't know if there are cultural differences about how this should be pronounced. He says early on that it kind of wards off the zombies, but apparently it doesn't because when when they're under that trap door.
alpha zombie reaches in and, and, and, pulls out. And so there's, just some things that just that way. Lucky, but it is more than made up for by the, come on. Listen, says the net. Have you, have you never picked a net? Have you never picked a net?
wee bit.
Speaker 2 (22:44.13)
You know,
This is my friend. The biggest nitpicking you ever did was of a previous Danny Boyle film of all people. I remember you being outraged by the fact that the cast of Sunshine did not appear to be the kind of people who would be sent to try. What were they trying to do? They were trying to blow up the sun?
Wait a minute. Hold on. They're trying to blow up the Sun. That's not a nitpick that goes across the whole the whole the whole movie against the alpha guy because he's got more
Listen, the iodine either works.
Speaker 1 (23:22.318)
Maybe in the second film we've discovered that the iodine isn't working anymore and they have to find some other... The overall experience of this film is it's operatic, it's gorgeous to look at and it's deeply moving to me. We do need to talk about the very last scene, my invocation of Benny Hill, you bringing up...
Too much on the eye thing.
Speaker 1 (23:50.722)
Jimmy Savile. mean, of course it is an, you know, specific reference to Jimmy Savile, who dear listener was a, a wildly beloved and famous children's TV presenter in Britain who was known for wearing tracksuits and gold chains and then turned out after his death to have violently and sexually abused at least 200 people. And so that's why I kind of think it's strange that they're invoking him at
at the end because this character called Jimmy, we first see as a child fleeing for his life. And we're going to obviously find out in the second film and maybe the third film, he's built some kind of cult around himself. there's so, you know, I don't know why they're invoking Jimmy Savile. And I don't know why also, like in these last few minutes, it's a comedy scene. is a Keystone Cops type sequence that's completely
totally different from the rest of the film. I trust these guys know what they're doing. It is, I mean, you may remember Slumdog Millionaire when we talked about that, Danny Boyle film. Fun, happy, delightful, life-affirming, and has some horrifying stuff in it. I remember the street children of Mumbai in that film being passed over too quickly. So I'm sort of sitting with a bit of...
know, dissonance around it. I want to see it again. I'm looking forward to the sequel. It's lovely to see such an entertaining, compelling film that makes me think about real things in the world.
You talk about a different tone for the end sequence and this is something I'm going to bring up and we're going to do a bonus episode. I'm going to talk about Megan 2.0, which I know you haven't seen, but we're in an age now of such media fluency in terms of how media is created and how we do out.
Speaker 2 (25:48.536)
how media is created and then also how it's consumed. You think about TikTok and you're going from one narrative to another and you can see that the same thing happening in films. So we can quickly switch genres from one scene to another, even within a scene. so Danny Boyle was already, if you watch films obviously, like what's the one with the heroin users, the heroin user movie with the young Obi-Wan Kenobi, that one. The guy's got great.
Great. Trainspotting. Sure.
He's got great, I was thinking of Trainspotting too. He's got great fluency with the camera. So for me, that total shift totally works. We see the same thing in Sinners, right? Because Sinners moves, get a horror film and then right at end we have the satisfying, almost like mid seventies, blaxploitation revenge picture as the Ku Klux Klan is gunned down. I did want to also say, I agree with you a hundred percent about Jodie Comer. She was in the bike riders.
The Mic Riders is based on a photo book with, and you can go online and hear the interviews that the photographer did with the characters that he was photographing, the people he was photographing, and it includes the character that Jodie Comer plays, and it's her interpretation of that person's accent and mannerisms is absolutely stunning. So it's worth watching just for that alone. I want to say, I'll end on this last thing, that if you love this, see this film, do listen, and if you love it,
I can't recommend, if you're kind of into these end of these world films or dystopias, I can't recommend highly enough Dorian Linsky, if that's you pronounce his name, Dorian Linsky's book, Everything Must Go. And it's kind of a super rich compendium of dystopian stories we've told ourselves over the years. And I thought I knew all the dystopian end of the world fiction to read or movies to see, they kind of envisioned the apocalypse. But this guy's done his research, deep, deep dive. It'll give you dozens and dozens.
Speaker 2 (27:41.902)
of new things to think about, to read and to watch if you're interested in these end of the world stories. All right, any last words on the 28 years later? Looking forward to the next one.
Memento Amura
Listen, you got to love, folks. This is it. Beauty and love. This is where I'm going. I don't care how cynical I am or how introverted or how much I can't stand people. It doesn't matter because in today's environment, beauty and love. You got to love. You got to love. Now, we're going to be doing a bonus episode coming up. We're going to do Megan 2.0 and talk about Michael Madsen. Michael Madsen has just passed as we're recording this. He's just recently passed. We're to talk about that.
And then also, of course, we've got the new big Superman apparently rebooting Superman again. I don't know what's happening with this one if he's teaming up with the Spider-Man or whatever it is.
It's the third that give you give you an insight to your listening to how long we've been doing this. If you're a new listener, this is literally the third reboot of Superman that has occurred during the time the jet and I have been. Do we present this show? that right? To rate the show? we perform? we do we perform this?
Speaker 2 (28:54.19)
It is performative, yes. But in a good way.
It's method acting, dear listener. And if you want to learn more about the show and if you'd like to support it and become a subscriber, which gets you access to bonus episodes like the one that we're just about to record about about Megan and Michael Madsen, if you go to patreon.com slash the film talk is happy to have you listening either way. I've been Gareth Higgins.
I've been jet low. Thanks for listening. Hold on. I kind of want to mention the face. Was that too? Yeah, just yeah. I'll just cut in and say it.
Soon.
Speaker 1 (29:31.412)
Okay, so before I say, been Gareth Higgins, you cut in with the Facebook and then I'll bounce back off you.
Don't forget we're also on the Facebook's folks. on the, as Garv said, patreon.com slash the Film Talk, but we're also on Facebook. do a search for the Film Talk and all you can also email us info at thefilmtalk.org.
Speaker 1 (29:58.574)
You want me to? All right. Yeah. Yep. And that's absolutely right. I've enjoyed this conversation. I'm going to see this film again. uh, dear listener, we'd love to hear from you about it. Come tell us about it. Email us about it. Oh, fuck. Um, all right. So you've done, you did Facebook. Okay. All right. That's absolutely right. Uh, love talking with you about this film.
Jett, as you know, I've been Gareth Higgins.
I've been Jet Low, we'll keep talking.
next time.