Fragment 11

I’m well aware of the fact that very few people have actually seen The Bone Temple, the latest installment of the 28 Days Later franchise. And it really is a shame, because the film stages one of the most gripping and uncompromising critiques of our current historical situation, or at least so it seemed to me. As is so often the case with Zombie films, they are at their most effective when they give us a visual language through which to express our own cultural predicament. In this sense Romero’s zombies were also allegorical representatives of the mind-numbing effects of global consumerism and the social fragmentation brought about by capitalism, inasmuch as they just wanted to eat brains. Likewise, the 28 Days Later series has always been critically engaged with issues of class, place, and -in some sense now- also race.

And this latest installment, helmed by director Nia daCosta, is no different, and arguably takes things to an even more explicit level. I’d go as far as saying that the film speaks to what might be called the radical openness of our current historical situation, i.e. what happens when the existing Master-signifiers disappear or emerge as impotent, and yet no hegemonic framework has yet replaced them. The answer? The rise of pseudo-masters, providing false certainty, gleeful identification with violence and retribution, tinged with nostalgia for a better time. The film explores this through the figure of Jimmy, a cult-leader professing to be the son of Satan. He instructs his followers to take his name and dress like him, exploiting them, whilst turning them into relentless enforcers of his will. These acts are tacitly legitmized by the mandate he claims to have received from Satan. Without a notion of history, truth, or even a concept of human dignity, Jimmy emerges as a charismatic and yet impotent pseudo-master, the embodiment of an obscene Big Other. The resonance with our own historical situation is clear. Amidst the collapse, all that is left is gleeful identification with violence, embodied by a weak and impulsive authoritarian only in it for himself.

And yet somehow the film is also very humane and hopeful. The figure of Ian, played memorably by Ralph Fiennes, embodies the best in us, the humanist tendency to insist on our own radical responsibility. Like in Wagner’s ring-cycle, the so-called twilight of the Gods (Götterdämmerung), is both a cataclysm and a rebirth. Asked, “are you Satan”, by one of Jimmy’s followers, he responds, “no, no-one is. nothing is.” In this sense the film resonates with our own political moment. Amidst the political embrace of nihilistic and punitive violence, we cannot wait to be saved, we must save ourselves. And that begins by standing up for each other and taking responsibility for our action/inaction. Against the cynicism of our times, The Bone Temple emerges as an uncompromising portrayal of the inhumanity of man, whilst making the case for a more hopeful vision of mankind.