Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting is indicative of two major trends in the 90s. The first is the surge of interest in independent film and the second is the “cool Britannia” movement in which a second wave of British invasion hit the US, bringing Oasis, Blur, and even the Spice Girls. The powerhouse opening, in fact, set to Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” with Ewan McGregor running down the streets of Edinburgh is reminiscent of the opening of the Beatles’s Help!. Except that Mark (McGregor), is explaining why he won’t choose life over heroin.
Boyle is as interested in the gritty lives of the dispossessed as he was in Slumdog Millionaire, but Trainspotting is less fantastical and far darker. This is the poor part of Edinburgh that few outsiders see. It is about a group of young Scottish men entrenched in the cycle of drugs. They do heroin everywhere, including in front of a baby who could be the daughter of any of the young men. Leading this gag of dope-heads is Sick Boy (an amazing Jonny Lee Miller), a chillingly disconnected punk obsessed with James Bond.
Mark, the most salvageable of the gang, decides to get off the drug, going as far as locking himself up, but his aspiration doesn’t last. Boyle never shies away from graphics and in a clever mixture of surrealism and hallucination he depicts Mark literally where his life is, down the toilet.
By laughing at Mark and his mates we are acknowledging how pathetic their lives are and that is the ultimate anti-drug statement. As disgusting as the toilet scene is, for instance, it works better than any of the countless public service videos targeting high schoolers. Especially true in the scene in which Spud (Ewen Bremner) botches a job interview, we are embarrassed for these guys; a rare quality in cautionary tales.
It is ironic that Sick Boy’s choice of conversation is “having it, and then losing it with age”. He doesn’t have “it” even in his youth as his life consists of shooting at people with a pellet gun. There is some debate about what the title means. Likely, it is an allegory for the wasted life of addicts. They passively sit and watch trains go by, debating about the merits of being Scottish and being outside of a dominant, ruling society.
Trainspotting is never preachy about its warning, but honest about the effects of drug addiction. By understanding the drug culture and the reasons why people become addicts, Boyle is better equipped to condemn them. With influence from Tarantino, Boyle makes his case through several vignettes. One chronicles the empty love life of the gang with a mix-up involving a soccer tape and a sex video. Others are sadder, as when Mark steals from his own working-class parents to fund his addiction and then progresses to stealing TVs from nursing homes, a habit that Irvine Welsh, the author of the book on which the film is based, witnessed himself while observing addicts.
“No matter how much you rob,” Mark narrates, “you have to do it again”. Tragically, this is the same way he treats drugs.
The pivotal point in the film is the death of the baby, resulting from neglect and exposure to drugs. Now Trainspotting stops being funny (even if darkly so) and begins a serious examination of the consequences of the actions of Mark and his friends. They can’t even respond appropriately, and ease their grief with more heroin. From here on, Trainspotting is just sad; Mark drags down his relationship with other people, including his own friends.
Trainspotting is a movie in which we actually take notice of the editing. There is one particularly brilliant sequence in which Mark, recovering in his bedroom, hallucinates about the fate of all the people he hurt. Among them is the baby he indirectly killed and his friend Tommy who has contacted HIV (his guilt coming back to haunt him). It’s an effective rendering of the electric filmmaking so in vogue in the 90s.
When Mark cleans up and gets a job in London, the entire look and feel of the film changes. So ugly was his world that we see the new locale as our own escape from the darkness of heroin addiction. He no longer has to take refuge in his drug friends put his past has ways of catching up to him. But when the short-wired Begbie (Robert Carlyle) and Sick Boy meet up with him in London, distinctions are drawn. Tommy’s funeral serves as a marker as to who is a good guy and who is not among the gang.
Sadly, the Academy was slow to appreciate independent cinema and overlooked Ewan McGregor, whose screen image has since evolved from a young addict to a polished gentleman, in a superb performance. Even within Trainspotting his character undergoes a complex transformation. Mark gradually manages to get out of addiction, making him one of the most enigmatic figures in British cinema. He was able to change while his friends couldn’t. So effective is he played and his story told by Danny Boyle that there is something truly liberating about seeing him break free from their influence.