About "Trainspotting (1996)"

* Directed by : Danny Boyle

* Written by : Irvine Welsh, John Hodge

* Starring : Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremmer, Johnny Lee Miller

- Synopsis :

Renton is a drug addict who tries to mend his ways by moving to London and starting life afresh. He, however, is pulled back into the world of addiction by his friends.

- Review :

Trainspotting is your perfect dose of social realism, in the middle of the era of Cool Britannia, it deconstructs every aspect of it as seen from the lens of drug addiction, mainly heroin, and explores the tragic and hilarious void of addiction. It mainly takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland, and follows Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor), whose main mean of escaping the miserable nature of his surroundings consists of taking drugs with his friends, who are also as hopeless as he is, if not more, resolving into different methods to forget about their everyday lives, which is all about pubs, football and rock music.

This film is chaotic, it combines the harsh truth with the fantastical hallucinations told through jump cuts, freeze frames, handheld cameras and wide angles to paint an image of escapism and nonconformity, similar to a Francis Bacon painting. Every character has their own issues, insecurities, hopes and dreams, but they all take each other into this slump, they know that they’re badly influencing each other, into a world of violence and theft and hypermasculinity, but they’re friends, and friends stick together, that’s what is usually claimed in popular media, but popular media isn’t usually about a gang of low life heroin-addicted junkies. The film characters aren’t logical in their approach, they don’t really think in terms of cause and effect, they don’t believe in consequences, they just do what they do, because as the protagonist says in his opening monologue, “who needs reasons when you got heroin?”.

The opening monologue is striking and thought-provoking, it preaches freedom, anarchy and “choosing life” to the tunes of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life”, all from a character that isn’t free at all, he’s a prisoner to an uncontrollable force, and he knows it. Renton wants to leave his current state, change his life and achieve that sweet middle-class success, but he doesn’t have any clear directions, just like the film itself, which is a series of anthological scenarios, loosely connected plot-wise, but every scene is essential because of Danny Boyle’s ability of depicting the good and bad in the journey of Renton and his mates, sometimes drugs are fun and cool, and sometimes it’s what nearly kills them.

Trainspotting is all about not accepting tradition, norms and ready-to-go social constructs, it’s about not accepting that achieving success is dull, robotic and boring, but sometimes a 9 to 5 job is as good as it gets, and choosing life can perhaps kill you, it’s punk having an existential crisis, and 90’s UK is the perfect place to display this dichotomy, between Spud’s (Ewen Bremmer) having a job interview while high on speed, or Diane (Kelly Macdonald) who’s a relatively rich schoolgirl who ended up as Renton’s one night stand, we can sense that every character wants to rise on that social ladder but isn’t willing to put the effort and let go of that freewheeling lifestyle, at least until the later parts of the film, partially.

The film eventually gets to the point of resolving into a plot structure, intentionally as Renton starts looking for a job, and putting some direction into his life, all in order to get back on track, but he slowly moves back to his original means, as “there’s final hits, and final hits”, with the film’s final hit being one of futility and ambiguity, set to “Born Slippy” by Underworld, a title that accurately describes Renton’s entire existence, coupled with his last words in the movie as he’s getting out of focus, “looking ahead for the day you die” is maybe all what is left, Renton is still Renton, and nothing really changes by the end of this 93 minute rollercoaster, but this time Renton accepts that while choosing life is definitely a good carefree option, growing respectful of death can help you in the long run.

                                                                       Taha LOUAFI