The second half of “28 Years Later” is a surprise, not because of some enormous plot twist, but in how the film’s violent zombie frenzy is interrupted by the introduction of Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who injects an unexpected poetic poignancy into the film. And the turning point is sharp. Ilsa (Jodie Comer) and her son Spike (Alfie Williams) are running for their lives when their attacker, the ferocious Alpha zombie Samson, crumbles to the ground from Kelson’s homemade tranquilizer dart.
“He inoculates Samson and the whole thing just stops,” said director Danny Boyle, when he was a guest on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, as he highlighted how important it was to cast an established actor with Fiennes’ gravitas in the role. “It’s an essential ingredient that Ralph has that ability to hold the picture, and by hold the picture I mean it’s almost like they can stop the picture and just point it in a different direction. He literally stops the film happening, he picks everybody up, including us, the audience, and we go off to meet his bone temple, which he’s been desperate to show people for 13 years.”
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The assumption of the other surviving humans has long been that Kelson went mad. Legend has it that years ago, one of the villagers saw the doctor lining up hundreds of dead bodies in front of an enormous fire. But as Alfie and Ilsa soon learn, as they are welcomed into Kelson’s temple built from those bodies, the doctor is quite different. Screenwriter Alex Garland referred to Fiennes’ character as “an inverted Kurtz,” a reference to the fictional character in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” which was adapted into the philosophical and homicidal AWOL Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”
“He has the manifestation in many ways of Kurtz: He’s mysterious, possibly dangerous looking, certainly people think he’s insane, but actually he’s a compassionate,” said Boyle. “He’s the only sane person left in a way, who has a compassion for all the victims of what the apocalypse has put people through.”
That compassion is expressed in what has become Kelson’s life’s work: The Bone Temple, or what he calls his Memento Mori (Latin for “remember death”), a memorial to all (rage virus-infected zombies included) those who have died from the virus. To handle the conception and design of Kelson’s temple, and the entire film’s costume and production design, Boyle made the unconventional choice of hiring Gareth Pugh and Carson McColl.
“They’re a couple of guys who’d never designed a film before, so this was quite a huge risk,” said Boyle. “They made their name in costume design, but I’d worked with them on a theater show, and found them extraordinarily inventive.”
Boyle knew his gamble had paid off when Pugh and McColl took the director to Lithuania to experience the Hill of Crosses, which became the inspiration for Kelson’s memento mori.
“This is one of the most extraordinary places I’ve ever been. It’s a memorial made of crosses, as the name suggests, and it’s built by the people. There’s no agency or government involved,” said Boyle, who explained that learning about the history of the way the Lithuanian hillside memorial had evolved, and continues to evolve, became a direct inspiration for Kelson’s bone temple. “It’s deeply moving to experience, and it has to do with how we’re all connected to each other, I think, and certainly that’s Kelson’s purpose.”
The filming location for Kelson’s temple was Redmire, a small village in North Yorkshire. There, Pugh and Carson constructed the temple from 250,000 individual replica bones and 5,500 skulls, an endeavor that took six months to complete.
It’s a commitment of time and resources that speaks to how much Pugh and Carson’s concept has driven Boyle and Garland’s ideas for the trilogy — including the title of the upcoming sequel, “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” which has already been shot by director Nia DaCosta and is due out next January.
“[Kelson’s bone temple] will carry on with increasing size depending on need eventually, and depending on whether somebody else takes on that responsibility after Kelson himself passes, if necessary,” said Boyle. “And yes, the second film will come back to the bone temple, and that’s thanks to our designers, who came up with this idea.”
To hear Danny Boyle‘s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform
