Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996)
I think I’m starting to enjoy British film?
I’ve never really been a fan of British film or television - it always felt so meaningless to me, probably because I’ve never been very in-tune with British culture. Watching Submarine (Richard Ayoade, 2010) changed this - it’s probably one of my favourite films of all time. And after this newfound appreciation of British cinema, the next film on my watchlist was Trainspotting - but I decided to wait, in order to watch it for the first time as part of our course. It definitely lived up to my expectations.
To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect: I knew that Ewan McGreggor was in it, and that was as far as my knowledge went.
Trainspotting follows Mark Renton, a skinhead and drug addict from Edinburgh, struggling with his rehabilitation and adulthood. He is accompanied by his friends Spud, Sick Boy and Tommy, as well as an older, violent acquaintance called Franco. The film follows Mark as he attempts to stop taking drugs, starts again, overdoses, almost starts again, tries to turn over a new leaf by moving to London, gets followed by his old friends to London, ends up partaking on one last drug deal after Tommy’s death, and then betrays all his other friends by running off with all the money - only leaving a small amount for Spud.
It’s a little difficult to initially decipher the true meaning of this film: the main character is fundamentally not a very good person, but something about his actions feels so relatable and understandable. It feels like he, and all of his friends, are just products of the trash, unhealthy society that they’re a part of.
The story is told very uniquely, with a lot of creative and expressive devices used: for example, when Mark overdoses, this is symbolised visually with him sinking into the carpet, and when he’s having withdrawals after quitting heroin cold-turkey, his bed travels backwards and his room becomes long, distorted. This scene where Mark is having his withdrawals is particularly interesting, because it more or less tells us what it is that is affecting him, driving him to relapse: he sees Tommy, who started taking drugs because his girlfriend broke up with him - which was Mark’s fault; he sees Spud in jail, hackled down with a ball and chain - which Mark was also involved in, but got out of a sentence due to being in rehab; he sees the baby that died at their drug house. It’s just a really interesting and unique technique.
I honestly loved the film: despite barely being able to understand half of what they were saying because we had no subtitles, it was still incredible. The filmmakers seemed to be trying to emulate what it was like to be a teenager in Edinburgh in the 1990s, and I think it stayed very much true to that.