Search - Trainspotting - Director's Cut (Collector's Edition) on DVD

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Wheelchair Assassin | The Great Concavity | 07/30/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Its setting and subject matter were somewhat grim to put it mildly, but that didn't stop Trainspotting from becoming one of the top movies of the nineties, and having just watched it this morning I can safely state that it holds up well to this day. While I haven't read the Irvine Welsh novel on which this movie is based, I have read some of his other work, and the movie is a perfect distillation of his storytelling style-rapid-fire, filled with bawdy set pieces, characters living on the edge of acceptable society, and lots and lots of swears. It's also the kind of violent, genre-defying, and pop culture reference-laden movie, complete with way-cool soundtrack, that emerged with such force in the nineties and spawned so many imitations in this decade. For my money at least, this movie is a much more entertaining and convincing look at the world of heroin users than the interesting, but annoyingly depressing and pedantic, Requiem for a Dream, which came out a few years later to almost hyperbolic praise. Trainspotting is a blunt, unapologetic look a life most of us can scarcely imagine, delivered with a combination of hilarity and horror that effortlessly intertwines these two extremes. It doesn't shrink from depicting the damage caused by heroin addiction, but it doesn't downplay all the fun of it either, which is what lends it so much of its gritty believability.

Trainspotting also marked the arrival on the international scene of director Danny Boyle, whose manic visual style would later serve him well on the slightly-less-brilliant 28 Days Later. Perhaps most impressively, it manages to contain one of my all-time top ten movie lines ("Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?"), my favorite nickname ever, fictional or otherwise ("We called him Mother Superior on account of the length of his habit"-brilliant), and more "Oh my God, did I just see that?" images than you'll find in fifty Hollywood blockbusters. In Boyle's hands the crazy imagery practically flies off the screen, be it human waste flying from a sheet across a room, the movie's protagonist climbing into Scotland's filthiest toilet to retrieve something he lost, or the hallucinatory, nightmarish haze of a cold-turkey withdrawal. The unrestrained depictions of sex, nudity, violence, drug use, and bodily functions make this a movie not to be viewed by the squeamish, but they perfectly suit its unflinching examination of the sordid goings-on in one country's drug-laden urban culture.

The action is filtered through the point of view of the movie's narrator, Mark Renton, a cynical but insightful twentysomething travelling through a nihilistic culture of nightclubs and drug dens without many concerns beyond getting his next fix because, well, all other concerns seem petty and inconsequential by comparison. Although I don't use drugs (well, the ones arbitrarily declared illegal anyway), it's not exactly hard to understand Renton's reasons-in a world as numbing as the one that surrounds him, the ephemeral rush of a heroin high is more tangible and true than most of what people use to distract themselves from their unfulfilling lives. Really, that's what the movie's about-the relentless pursuit of that elusive and nebulous concept known as happiness. Renton's not that bad a guy; he mostly just wants to score some drugs and sex and listen to some Iggy Pop, and if his lifestyle causes anyone else (i.e., his parents) to suffer, well, that's just an unfortunate byproduct. Besides, it's not like he's missing that much: the Scotland of Trainspotting is a rather depressing land of dingy, Detroit-esque post-industrial decay, and even the natural beauty of the local highlands isn't enough to overcome the cynicism that's overtaken Renton and most of his friends. Viewed against this backdrop, it's easy to ask whether the straight life is even worth it.

Although Ewan MacGregor plays Renton in career-making fashion (too bad he spent all that time on those mediocre Star Wars prequels), Robert Carlyle delivers the most immediately enjoyable performance as the menacing Begbie, an unhinged, beer-swilling psychopath who looks at heroin users with contempt but has no problem cutting a swath of destruction through any bar where someone crosses him, intentionally or not. Even though (or perhaps because) he's so violent and unpredictable, Begbie gives the movie a sort of bizarre comic relief through the sheer force of his twisted personality alone. Even though I wouldn't get within fifty feet of the guy, I couldn't help but enjoy watching him, especially with Carlyle turning in such a likably maniacal performance.

Besides, in addition to what I've written above, how can you not like a movie that features a shot of a dead baby crawling along a ceiling and rotating its head 180 degrees? If that doesn't scream fun for the whole family, I don't know what does."