Trainspotting

The downside of coming off junk was I knew I would need to mix with my friends again in a state of full consciousness. It was awful. They reminded me so much of myself, I could hardly bear to look at them.

I had a hard time deciding what to say about this film. I remembered it being both great and disturbing. It is certainly disturbing, but as I watched was not sure if it was great or not. For a long time I have referenced it as Danny Boyle’s best film, so now I am confronted with the possibility that I was wrong. Not only wrong, but vocally so.

I remembered several aspects of this film being great: It had a wonderful cast, whose actors went off to star in many major roles themselves. There were a couple of shocking scenes.  How the film showed just how thin the lines are between life, dreams and the dream-life of drugs. Overall I recalled how this film challenged me by confronting my conception of a normal life and drug culture.

The crew from Trainspotting: Tommy (Kevin McKidd), Spud (Ewen Bremner), Begbie (Robert Carlyle), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), Renton (Ewan McGregor), and Lizzy (Pauline Lynch)…at least I hope that’s Lizzy. © 1996 Channel Four Films, Trainspotting.

It turns out that the cast was even more successful than I recalled. I remembered Ewan McGregor—Obi Wan Kenobi from the Star Wars prequels, Robert Carlyle—who won the Best Actor BAFTA¹ for The Full Monty, Ewen Bremmer—Mullet from Snatch, but I thought this was Rhys Ifans for some reason, and Johnny Lee Miller—star of “Elementary” but eternally Dade from Hackers to me. I never connected the confident, beautiful jail bait teenager as Kelly Macdonald, probably because of the chasm between this and her role in Gosford Park. The other shocker was Kevin McKidd as the poor bastard whose friends steal his sex tape, which gets him dumped, which leads him to finally try heroin, which has an HIV infected needle. He played Lucius Vorenus in “Rome” and is well known/wasted talent on “Grey’s Academy” as Dr. Owen Hunt.

Diane (Kelly Macdonald), ready for school after a night of shagging Renton. © Trainspotting, 1996 Miramax.

The two scenes were equally disturbing, but less shocking as I knew they would not have been magically edited out of the film. They still affected me more than I expected, though. As for the drugs and drug life, I am pleased to report that I am not much more familiar with them than when I was high school. Regardless, all of the characters are interesting and it is hard to root for any of them. I guess the film was ahead of its time.

In conclusion, I had nothing to worry about because this is still Danny Boyle’s finest, it just failed to live up to my memories. It just happens to turn out that Slumdog Millionaire is also his finest. At #154 on IMDb’s Top 250 list, between How to Train Your Dragon and Gone with the Wind, which sounds about right. ****

 

¹ BAFTA = The British Academy of Film and Television Arts, whose awards are considered the British Oscars. At least that’s how we here in the US consider them.