Trainspotting

r96sk

May 30, 2024

9/10

Not the most enthralling, but <em>'Trainspotting'</em> does have plenty to say - and boy does it portray it! There are particularly strong performances from Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner and Robert Carlyle. I didn't like watching the bunch of characters given how severely unlikeable they are. Of course, that is very much the intention so it's a credit to the actors and the filmmakers at how convincing it all is. The humour is weaker than expected, perhaps due to the horrors of the plot taking centre stage. Their struggles are showed in a heavy manner, to the point I did feel uncomfortable seeing them <em>do their thing</em>. I do feel post-watch that I'm missing something from it in regards to being able to appreciate it higher, I can't shake that feeling. That's probably the only negative at nailing the realness so much, you miss out on other bits to enjoy about a film; or at least to me. Cool to see this on the big screen, mind. I think it's the first movie I've ever watched at the cinema that isn't a contemporary release. I evidently hadn't seen this before so thought what better way to watch it for the opening time! Now for the sequel (albeit back in the doldrums of home release!😁).

**Trainspotting** (1996) Directed by Danny Boyle Danny Boyle's Trainspotting is sardonic in the truest sense, both in style and story. It doesn't make fun of addiction, doesn't glamorize it, doesn't preach about it. Instead, it presents the whole grotesque cycle with dark wit and visual audacity, letting you see exactly how absurd and horrifying and inevitable it all is. The film is as much about what creates addiction—Thatcher's Britain, economic collapse, a generation with no prospects staring into the void—as it is about the addiction itself. Boyle's style is kinetic, hallucinatory, utterly committed to making even squalor visually arresting. The famous dive into "the worst toilet in Scotland," the baby crawling on the ceiling, the nightmarish withdrawal sequences—all of it serves the sardonic tone perfectly. This is not realism; this is Edinburgh's underclass refracted through a fever dream, and it works precisely because Boyle understands that heroin isn't an escape from reality but a different kind of prison with better visuals. Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller—all the performances are good, each actor finding the specific way their character is trapped and the specific way they lie to themselves about it. Begbie, the violent teetotaler, might be the most terrifying of all precisely because he doesn't need drugs to be monstrous. The "Choose Life" monologue frames the whole thing: choose mortgage payments and washing machines and tedious jobs and slow death by boredom, or choose heroin and fast death by overdose. When those are your options, the critique isn't subtle. It's a side-swipe at a system that offered an entire generation nothing worth choosing. Trainspotting is sardonic, savage, and still sharp nearly three decades later.