To close out the year so far, it’s time for a look at a bleakly-themed classic—choose life, choose Ewan, it’s Trainspotting.
We’ve talked before about a certain trend of sorts that began to rise in the late nineties, around the so-called ‘end of history’ that awkwardly proved less than conclusive--mostly about middle-class men trying to fumble upon some definition of purpose. You had the now woefully aged American Beauty, expounding as it was the terrible oppression of having a stable white collar job in suburbia, and on the more self-aware and scathing side came the likes of Fight Club. In a period seemingly freed from the concerns of the Cold War and with nothing but plain sailing seemingly on the horizon, all it touched on a generation raised under the specter of intercontinental conflict trying to figure out what the hell to do.
But before all that came something more down-to-earth, relatively speaking, about those with good reason to not know what the hell to do. From Danny Boyle came something with a bleaker British touch looking into those for whom a sense of national identity was hardly a concern next to just surviving and coping. Before he became Obi-Wan Kenobi for a generation, this is where Ewan McGregor made his start, diving into Scottish toilets and grappling with heroin within Edinburgh’s urban blight. I guess maybe if the upcoming Disney series chronicles his adventures with Tatooine grass, it’ll all come full circle.
It’s best to keep it simple with a film like this—the narrative’s somewhat disconnected but with the characters being as chaotic as they are it’s something that works. You’ve got the looming sense of drug-fuelled insanity threatening to come to a head the more the story progresses, finally hitting crescendo with the memorable as all hell bedroom scene where McGregor essentially loses his mind. With CG babies that, compared to most animations of that sort in the nineties, actually do look genuinely terrifying. Between all this are the hopeless escapades of his fellow addicts, made watchable with all the black comedy someone like me could want for these sorts of proceedings.
If I do have any critique, it’s that the last part set in London, as Ewan’s character tries a new life, feels slightly disjointed to me next to the rest. But truthfully, that’s secondary next to my main point—even if Trainspotting was made in the nineties, even if it focuses on the deprived areas of Scotland, it doesn’t feel like it’s lost much relevance. It may not be via heroin, but there’s plenty finding their opioid-fuelled means of escape in times that feel far more confused and lost than whatever now naive sentiments people 25 years ago had to the nineties. Though the situation may not be the same, the feeling of going in circles within hopelessness is a wider one for sure now. But, compared to say Requiem for a Dream, Trainspotting leaves on about a good a note as it can afford for its lead characters—most of them, anyway. Things may not be perfect, but some may yet manage the best they can, whatever the means.
Twenty years later, Boyle and company returned for T2—not to be confused with a James Cameron opus. It was the kind of sequel that, while arguably somewhat redundant, was definitely watchable and had its share of moments. Indulgent as it may have been, seeing McGregor rephrase the classic opening speech of the original to rant about the vapidity of fake-news infested online media of the current age sure hasn’t lost anything since. While I’d place it as more optional than the first, it’s something worth a one-off look at least in my books.
That leaves us off for the year, with all its sharp ups and downs—there’s more I hope to catch up on and natter about, sooner or later. I’ll see you in 2022, whatever twists it may bring us…
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