Danny Boyle
28 anni dopo

Danny Boyle's new film does a couple of important things and, most importantly, it does them very well.

First of all, "28 Years Later" seems to rewrite the cinematic grammar of zombie films, reformulating the style of a genre that was at risk of becoming stale, if not off-putting.

Secondly, Boyle seems to want to rebuild a civilization after destroying it. Britain, annihilated by the rabies virus that spread in "28 Days Later", is now wild, regressed, medieval. A perfect scenario for a discourse on values, on epos, and on ethos.

The directorial style of this work is particularly meticulous and thoughtful. It was impossible to be satisfied with the usual zombie dynamics (think of the trickle of "The Walking Dead"), so a formula was needed to rejuvenate all those worn-out clichés.

And that's where the unexpected shots come in (there's never a monster walking slowly with its hands forward, thankfully), the strongly elliptical or otherwise "deviant" editing (images of films dedicated to the Middle Ages as symbolic inspiration), music in contrast with the narration, slow motion to emphasize the killings (every time an arrow finds its target), panoramas of landscapes (even in moments of pathos), extreme close-ups on the monsters.

It seems like a scholarly work: how to rejuvenate an already worn-out genre?

The style alternates between a refined aesthetic taste (flowery meadows, the sea at sunset, the lush landscapes of the "new world") and a more action-video game cut when young Spike goes hunting for the infected with his father. Boyle seems to want to cite some great video games as well. I think of "The Last of Us", but also the two recent "God of War" games, where father and son move among enemies in threatening environments, but meanwhile, they talk, confront each other, even argue and, above all, grow and change.

And it is here that we connect to the story. Partly a coming-of-age novel, partly a new era palingenesis with clear political reference to Brexit. After the infection, the United Kingdom was quarantined, isolated from the rest of the world. A catastrophic isolation, indeed, the story begins at Lindisfarne, a tidal island off the northeast coast of England, where a group of people managed to build a safe haven thanks to the tides that periodically cover the strip of land connecting the island to the mainland.

A small microcosm without great resources, but with "new" values and customs. A village that shows how today's man, without electricity, cars, and snacks, wouldn't be much different from the medieval one. In rites, fears, values, practices. Thus, amid varying issues, Spike and his father set off on a mission to the "continent", to retrieve resources but above all to gain experience, to live the adrenaline of kills.

It will be up to the very young Spike to realize the hypocrisies of that system that his father seems to know so well and, in some way, to rebel against the new medieval values. And when does the Middle Ages end? Well, when science breaks in with its non-trivial truths, when one no longer surrenders to the ferocity of the context but finds intelligent solutions, when the dead are honored, when even the monsters' lives are spared.

At the height of symbolism, a child born from an infected and saved by Spike's (dying) mother represents a strong sign of rebirth. To continue living as a human race (or as Britons), we must accept the "different," embrace its offspring as our own children. Another strongly political message.

"28 Years Later" works excellently because it combines the action genre, light and dynamic, and the post-apocalyptic one, so conceptual and ponderous, with a fresh style. Between bows and arrows, between fires and skulls, Boyle constructs a human trajectory that is still only sketched but already fully significant.