Hidur Gudnadottir

28 Days Later: The Bone Temple & Joker

published in The Wire No.432, London, 2020

Excerpt

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Viewed positively, Bone Temple’s scored nativism leads toward an intergenerational healing in an illuminated area of post-colonialism. Of that I’m not critical. What I bemoan is the presumption that a mass entertainment industry such as cinema is innocently viewed as a progressive ally to such calls to symbolic reparation. In one sense, music is perfectly suited to these symbolic acts. The history of Black music for one has maintained the most challenging, radical and inspiring moments of transcendence—usually for cutthroat commercial labels, and with little if any critical acknowledgement from the intelligentsia. Few would regard DaCosta’s film or Gudnadottir’s score and their versioning of Alex Garland’s script and Danny Boyle’s franchise as Pop slop. But maybe it all is. Maybe Gudnadottir’s music is lugubrious and portentous. You’ll be the one deciding.

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Text © Philip Brophy. Images © respective copyright holders.