REVIEW: Trainspotting

Trainspotting (dir. Danny Boyle, 1996) *****

reviewed by Mark Taylor

I would first like to apologise; I have not written many reviews in my time and thought I’d start with one of the films that sparked my interest in film as an object of study. This of course means I will giving director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge’s balls a thorough licking… So, sorry about that.

The hurried shoes of Ewan McGregor’s drug riddled Mark Renton open the film, along with, the now ever famous speech about choosing life, or more his choice not to. It is this ideology which spurs the film: this isolation Renton and his fellow drug addicts  propose upon themselves and the fantasy they live in, as they run from their real life commitments. The film never neglects to show the consequences of drugs, even as Renton speaks of its sexuality or its glorification (Have you ever timed your orgasum by 1,000?) Boyle reminds us of the death and misery drugs bring, none more sickening  and distraught then the death of the communal baby, Dawn. But it is this fantasy which compelled me to the film, or even how delicate films are; as such subtle touches to a films construction can make all the difference. The simple camera tricks of Boyle are wonderful; From Renton’s head first plundge into the worst toilet in Scotland or his destressing cold Turkey experience made so much more harrowing by the appearence of demented thug, Begbie (Played to stereotypical perfection by Robert Carlyle) under his sheets.

The music in the film melts beautifully, not only as a back-up to the passions of the characters, the use of Underworl’d Born Slippy as a blend to the excitment of Renton’s final epiphany is tingling, it also offers us a relative structure to the unmeasured time span of the film. The film begins in the late 80’s and follows through to the mid-90’s and commits to the film’s message of a changing time as we move from the world of Iggy Pop to the modern take-over of Dance music, marked by the conclusion that not only drugs are changing but too are people, sex and music.

The film does owe a lot to the novel Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (a book I cannot recommend to you enough) and sometimes the film feels constrained by it, and the ending, which is much more fitting to absoulte waster of  the literary Renton, is out of place with Hodge’s more sympathetic version. As well as this, the film provides a very self pitying nature for these characters, which works (especially at the poinent moment of Renton’s flinch when a nurse attempts to take a blood sample) but our view from the these characters seems unreal when we come into contact with the hospital and the apparnt uncaring side to them, and the nurses screams for Renton to ‘wake up’, did not sit well with me.

But the film will always be an oscar nominated jewel, its performances are a blend of the comical and the bizzare, with a special mention to Jonny Lee Miller and his Connery obsessed ‘Sick Boy’, you can feel the attention and care taken with all of Welsh’s characters, take the drug father, Swanny (or Mother Superior) who is an utter joy to watch. The film is packed with detail that can only be caught in a second viewing (keep an eye on subtitles) and its use of popular culture as the only link between this drug fantasy and reality is woven smoothly through out.

Choose Life, Choose Trainspotting.
Now if that ending to a review has not been used in the past 14 years, other critics are idiots.