Trainspotting
Directed by Danny Boyle
Starring Ewan McGregor, Ewan Bremner, Johnny Lee Miller
Reviewed by Natalie Woodlock
If you're looking for a happy ending, or for a moralising don't-do-drugs-they're-bad-for-you film, you shouldn't see Trainspotting. But if you're looking for a film that neither moralises nor romanticises young people living in Scotland's seething lower-class underbelly, then this is the film to see.
It's set in the 1980s in Edinburgh, during the Thatcher era. The lives of a group of five young people at the very bottom of society are laid bare for all to view. Trainspotting is raw and gutsy in its willingness to expose the manifestations of youth poverty and alienation.
Renton (Ewan McGregor) and his mates, Spud (Ewan Bremner), Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller) and Tommy (Kevin McKidd), are junkies who swear that every hit is the last one, now they're going to come clean. The film follows the vicious circle of violence, unemployment, poverty, crime, AIDs and smack which they are all caught up in.
Boyle does not attempt to explain or to give a solution to these social problems — he seems to aim only to present and analyse the situation as it stands. He portrays the characters with honesty, often in black comedy, but overall in the harsh light of reality.
Much of Renton's anger and frustration, although he does have a consciousness that the system is rotten, dissipates into a self-destructive habit. Constantly counterposed throughout the film are the conservative ideal of life and the lives these young people lead. For Renton, even sinking to the lowest level of degradation is better than waking up one day and finding out you have a comfortable place in the system, with a family, 2.3 kids, the car, the house and the dog that comes in a package with it.
With Boyle's direction and McGregor's talented acting, Trainspotting looks at the dark consequences of heroin addiction and its impact on the individual user. Renton will justify any action to score the next hit: friends are friends only if they have money or smack.
Boyle and the actors have compiled a darkly intense piece which documents the realities for a section of young people. It is vicious cycle from which spotting the next train, grabbing hold of the next hit, appears to be the only way to survive, and death the only way to escape.