Trainspotting Review

by Scott Renshaw (srenshaw AT leland DOT stanford DOT edu)
July 26th, 1996

TRAINSPOTTING
    A film review by Scott Renshaw
    Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle.
Screenplay: John Hodge.
Director: Danny Boyle.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

    Nihilism does not equal art. I want to get that point out of the way, because it appears to be a widely-held belief that critics feel exactly the opposite. People note the praise lavished upon films like NATURAL BORN KILLERS, KIDS and SEVEN and conclude that there is some conspiracy among the film cognoscenti to force bleakness down the collective throat of the viewing public. While I can speak for no critic but myself (I admired SEVEN, but not NBK or KIDS), I believe that the common thread is actually daring. Film-makers dealing with unpleasant subject matter are almost forced to be inventive to keep the audience watching. Others, if they choose, may praise TRAINSPOTTING for its squalor; I prefer to praise it for the invigorating perspectives of a writer and a director with ideas and the ability to convey them.
    The ostensible hero of TRAINSPOTTING is Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor), a young man in Edinburgh who, as his opening monologue announces, has chosen "not to choose." Instead, he has chosen to remain perpetually high on heroin with his friends Spud (Ewen Bremner) and Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), unemployed and uncaring. Though he attempts to go straight on occasion, he always returns to his one and only love, even when discouraged by non-using friends like Tommy (Kevin McKidd) and Begbie (Robert Carlyle). It is only when he is caught shoplifting that Renton is forced to go cold turkey, and to confront every unpleasant reality of his life.

    TRAINSPOTTING, a smash hit in Britain, has received a great deal of comparison to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, both of them tales of amoral youth with a likeable, philosophically inclined first-person narrator. It is a connection director Danny Boyle obviously doesn't discourage, since one scene is set in a nightclub styled after CLOCKWORK's Korova Milkbar, and he is going for a similar kind of social criticism. Though Renton begins the film with a rant against materialism and suburban values, it is always clear that his heroin habit has nothing to do with protest. In one memorable scene, Spud goes to a job interview required by social services if he is to remain eligible for unemployment, and he is forced to do his best to make sure that he doesn't actually get the job. They are unapologetic leeches, but Boyle and writer John Hodge (adapting the novel by Irvine Welsh) also show the hypocrisy of those who criticize Renton, each with his or her own addiction problem: Begbie is a drunkard, Tommy smokes, and Renton's mother takes Valium. No one is clean; it's all a question of degree.

    But if there is one thing Boyle does masterfully, it is showing exactly how brutal this particular degree can be. The users' relationship with the drug might be romanticized -- including a scene in which Renton feels himself sinking into the floor -- there is nothing romanticized about the effects of heroin addiction. Boyle's most effective scenes show users literally wallowing in their own filth: Renton as he rumages through a toilet to find the heroin suppositories he just lost, eventually being swallowed by the bowl; and Spud waking up in a strange bed to find a rather disgusting mess. In some of these scenes there is a comic edge, but Boyle counters them with some absolutely chilling moments, including a tragedy for which the only response anyone can think of is to get high again, and a nightmarish detox hallucination by Renton which is guaranteed to have you squirming. With a virtuoso's skill, Boyle is able to take viewers deeply enough into the experience of heroin users that they can see both the horrible toll the drug takes and the sensation which makes it all worthwhile to them.

    TRAINSPOTTING's third act, focusing on a heroin deal which interferes in Renton's attempt to live a straight life, is something of an unfortunate side trip, as the film loses much of the urgency it had done such an exceptional job of building. It does give Robert Carlyle's hair-trigger psychotic Begbie a showcase, but the whole episode feels like padding in a much edgier film. There is one thing that sub-plot does quite a good job of demonstrating, however, and that is how truly meaningless drug friends can be to each other; once they're not high, the lads in TRAINSPOTTING are ready to screw each other over in a moment. It also provides a perfect comic coda for Renton's stab at respectability, because it's clear he doesn't have the moral fiber for it. That actually shows what a neat trick Boyle has pulled off: he has made a moral film without moralizing, even though it might not look like one on the surface. Bleak may not always be beautiful, but in TRAINSPOTTING it is necessary to make the point, a point as sharp as a needle in the arm.

    On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 needles and the damage done: 9.
--
Scott Renshaw
Stanford University
http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw

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