Trainspotting, based on the novel by Irvine
Welsh
Trainspotting
is a phenomenal work that has achieved cult status, provocative, challenging,
intriguing, creative, humorous, edgy as it is, the motion picture that has
launched the career of a few excellent performers, from Ewan McGregor to Kelly
Macdonald.
Perhaps one
of the most important features, attractions of this dazzling, fast,
effervescent, vibrant, at times nauseating motion picture – if not the most important
– is its complexity – it is a mixture of bathroom humor taken to incredible
extremes and mediation on the meaning of life, consumerism and the catastrophe
of drug addiction.
The first
few lines have made history, with their deep, insightful, deceptive, philosophical
message of “Choose life. Choose a job…big television…electrical tin openers…”
It is evidently
a satire, an indictment of the modern society wherein choosing life means
buying things, a longing for material goods that psychology studies have demonstrated
bring little or nothing in terms of happiness, since we adapt to them- this is called
Hedonic Adaptation.
The alternative
for the protagonists of this tragicomedy – which is strangely listed only as
drama on IMDB – is taking drugs of any kind – at one point the hero, Renton aka
the outstanding Ewan McGregor, lists the names of what seem to be more than one
hundred pills that one can buy in pharmacies or the street.
Renton tries
to rehabilitate and give up heroin addiction, but this happens quite a few
times, since he says this is the final hit, only to repeat it again and again,
and his struggle may work to educate viewers on what the drug plague can bring one
to.
There are
some hallucinating, horrible scenes that depict what happens and what addicts
are able to do, even when they actually do not engage on what they must do, as
in the case of the supervision of the baby that dies, in a flat full of junkies
in various states of drug induced unconsciousness.
Some scenes
can be hard top watch, although they can also be hilarious, like the moment
when a few suppository drug pills fall into the “Worst Toilet in Scotland” and
Mark Renton submerges himself into the most disgusting, faeces covered latrine
ever seen on the screen, which at one point looks like part of the sick
imagination of a man under the influence.
Spud is another
member of this outré, outrageous group and he has his own adventure with
excrement, as he drinks too much one night, just as his girlfriend is ready to
have sex, he passes out, in the morning finds that he has defecated in the bed.
He comes to
breakfast, where the parents of his girlfriend take a kind view of his
excesses, while the girl says he should be tied, the young man has the bed
shits with him, the mother wants to take care of them, they struggle over them
and suddenly, all the turds fly over the room, covering the faces of those
around.
Sick Boy is
the third exotic character, obsessed with Sean Connery, his career, the Bond
girls – he knows all the details and has a defiant opinion on the Oscar, which
was not deserved for The Untouchables, but it is also the result of a “sympathy
vote” according to this cinephile- well, at least he watches his idol.
Sick Boy
has more to say about artistic careers in general, after analyzing The Name of
the Rose, the inevitable descent, he mentions other stars like Elvis, with his
serious collapse as he aged.
Mark Renton
claims he wants to borrow a video tape with the Best 100 Goals, wherein he has
inserted a sex tape of his comrade and his girlfriend and when these two return
home and want to enjoy watching themselves, they find no tape and think it is at
the rental store and available for all to watch.
Begbie is portrayed
by Robert Carlyle and is perhaps the most dangerous, extreme and violent of the
group, obsessed with fighting, beating innocent people as he plays pool and
someone disturbs him because he eats chips, throwing glasses from the upper
floor and attacking whomever for no reason.
Abandoning his
vice for some time, Mark Renton discovers in a nightclub that his sexual
desires – long annihilated by heroin – are revived, he meets Diane - played by
the actress introduced by this classic, Kelly Macdonald – and she is very
adult, self- assured, cynical, witty, and courageous and takes him home.
They have
sex, she then says he can sleep on the couch, outside her room or just go to
his place – in the morning, he wakes up, comes to breakfast where a man asks
him about coffee and then the hero demands- are you flat mates with Diane?
To his
astonishment, these people are not sharing an apartment with the girl, they are
the parents of a teenager who is only fourteen – on the way to school, Mark
talks to the uniformed student and explains that it is illegal to have a
relationship and therefore he is ending it, only to hear the girl threating to
go to…the police if he stops seeing her.
As drug
addicts do, the group is involved in all possible crimes, from stealing televisions
and other things from old people’s homes, to getting the pills they covet from unsuspecting
doctors and anybody else, shop lifting and when they get caught, Spud is sent
to jail, while Renton escapes severe punishment.
The Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse have a chance to make money, as a couple of Russian
sailors sell some drugs to one dealer who passes it on to them and they take it
to London to a criminal played by the novelist, Irvine Welsh.
This fantastic
work has received acclaim from critics and audiences alike and is included on
the New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made List:
“Choose life.
Choose a job.
Choose a career.
Choose a family,
Choose a fucking big television
Choose washing machines, cars,
Compact disc players, and electrical tin
openers.
Choose good health, low cholesterol
And dental insurance.
Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments.
Choose a starter home.
Choose your friends.
Choose leisure wear and matching luggage.
Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase
In a range of fucking fabrics.
Choose DIY and wondering who you
Are on a Sunday morning.
Choose sitting on that couch watching
mind-numbing
Sprit-crushing ga me shows
Stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth.
Choose rotting away at the end of it all,
Pishing you last in a miserable home
Nothing more than an embarrassment to the
selfish,
Fucked-up brats
You have spawned to replace yourself.
Choose your future. Choose life.
Scottish shite”
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