Kritiken

It’s almost as if [Trainspotting] was destined to happen. One long rolling megamix of music and image, it was described at the time of its release as something that is “addictive” and, like the subject, injected “right into the vein”. It remains so today. Easy to start, all-consuming, impossible to quit.

Trainspotting has been accused of glorifying moral depravity and drug use by some. For the rest of us who weren’t preoccupied with sententious bullshit, the film served an entirely different purpose. It bombarded us with the gritty reality of the human condition, littered with used syringes, dead babies and unforgiving glimpses of wasted lives.

Trainspotting is a harmless, middle-class exercise; Trainspotting [the film] is a rejection of all things harmless and middle class — at least until its final twist, which amounts to a simple, weary acceptance of what we all must learn in making peace with adult life. It may be that if you don’t see Trainspotting when you’re young, you won’t get it, but to what young person has it not occurred that following the rules is a dead end, a surrender to all things mediocre and dull?

I’d forgotten what a great movie it is, or perhaps I’d just never understood. The overt references are to A Clockwork Orange and the 1960s films of Richard Lester, but really, it’s the Goodfellasof drug movies, slipping between darkly comic episodes with confidence and style.

[Twenty-one] years on, [Trainspotting] holds up terrifically well. This movie was the first, maybe the only successful 90s British attempt at answering films like Goodfellas or Pulp Fiction; it has a version of their spirit and power – and matches them for hardcore violence, horror and drugs. But John Hodge’s screenplay... brings in a grittily British kind of social-realist pessimism.

Revisiting the film, it’s easy to see why one might have briefly believed that something extraordinary and world-changing was taking place. It is cinematic bottled lightning, a once-in-a-generation marvel that feels as fresh today as it did 20 years ago.

[Trainspotting] is a triumph. Audaciously punching up the pitch-black comedy, juggling parallel character strands and juxtaposing image, music and voice-over with a virtuosity worthy of Scorsese on peak form, Trainspotting the movie captures precisely Welsh's insolent, amoral intelligence.

Danny Boyle's adrenaline rush of a movie is an extraordinary achievement: a story of squalid, low-life drug addiction that is realistic, responsible and - apart from one almost unbearably painful moment involving a baby - very, very funny.

The masterstroke [in Trainspotting] is not taking the typically easy British film-making route of going for gritty and depressing. Director Danny Boyle directs with glamour and pace, aided by an inspired soundtrack, and produces a movie that shines with unusual ambition despite its British roots.

The scudding honesty of Welsh's writing is non-judgemental. Its comedy leaps barricades. Boyle's film succeeds in equating conflicting movie strands - the madcap druggie romp, the magic realism trip, the docu-drama, the hardcore morality tale - with convincing dexterity. It is the best Scottish film since Silent Scream, a work of genuine imagination.

With its witty script, cool soundtrack and boundless energy, Trainspotting is a hard film to dislike - but a hard film to get emotional about either. With the exception of Tommy the fitness freak, there is little sense of tragedy in the waste of life. Drugs may mean death, but a life without drugs is portrayed as a living death.

Heroin is for losers... But in the hands of Boyle and this fantastic cast, and with a stunning soundtrack, it is possible to receive that message in an unprecedented and unrivalled piece of entertainment.