Becky's article - 2nd Draft

The English Patient, Sense and Sensibility, Small Faces. British cinema was known for its charming dramas…then along came Trainspotting. It’s a story of a young adult whose life revolves around drugs, but then he comes to an important decision - ditch the dirty heroin or carry on killing off every opportunity at life he has?

Since Trainspotting was released over a decade ago, it has definitely caused much controversy in the news and other areas of reality. It’s hard to come across this film now and if you were to go into your local HMV, you would probably have a hard time finding it in the DVD section. If you were to look for it on the TV, it would come on once in a blue moon very late at night running into the early hours of the morning. However, this film is a classic and will remain a classic for a while, being the film that is the must see for teenagers of this generation – knocking the film A Clockwork Orange off of the top spot.

In the year 1995, if you were even to mention the name Ewan McGregor, you’d probably get a load of blank faces and confused comments from your mates wondering who the hell you were going on about. This man had starred in films before, even working with the director of Trainspotting, Danny Boyle, before taking a big leap in his acting career. At the tender age of 24, McGregor auditioned for the role of Mark Renton and got it, the starting point in the making of a delusional, funny and emotional British film that brought together many themes such as drug use, sex, community and friendship.

Throughout the film, the characters are seen sniffing, smoking and injecting drugs into their bodies to give them a bit of a high until their next hit. Throughout the film, Renton swears he will quit the drugs. Throughout the film he wants to ‘choose life’. It’s not until Renton takes an overdose of heroin, provided by good old ‘mother superior’ as they like to call their dealer, that his pathetic excuse for a life begins to take a dramatic change. A near death experience, an abandonment from his friend and a ‘nice’ little trip to the hospital, forces Renton’s parents to step in and take control of his dirty druggie life. After making him go cold turkey and a series of incredibly freaky events that I’m sure the character of Renton would rather forget, he is clean and has a second chance of having a normal life. Getting a successful job and moving to London seems to help him along the way of making a new start, but it’s not long until his old druggie mates, the disturbing and frightening Begbie and his best mate Sick boy, follow him to ask him a favour – to take part in a stupid drug deal. What is Renton to do? Does he fob off his old mates who have grown up with him, helped him in some ways and provided many of the good times in his old life? Or does he help them? He has the money now to pay for this drug deal and has Begbie’s word that he will get the money back. But it’s just another moment where Renton’s willpower may show how damaged it is.

Filmed in a different style to many of the films around at the time, Trainspotting stood out. If you were to watch it carefully, you could see that it had similar shots to a music video, fast paced and ‘in your face’ shots that can co-operate with the narrative to give off the druggie feel of being ‘high’ and then totally down in the dumps again. It is known that director, Danny Boyle, came up with this style from the ‘MTV’ generation, using music videos and what the younger generation want to see to make up a surreal film that can bring out many different emotions from the audience. And this style has also conjured up some of the most recognisable scenes of all time. That being the scene when Renton uses the ‘worst toilet in Scotland’ and the film shows him diving into the toilet, playing on the metaphor that it is a sea of water, to find his precious drugs and another scene when Renton nearly dies from an overdose of heroin, but the style is slowed down and shown from his point of view.

Trainspotting was considered a triumph as even the top film critics commented on it and it received top marks for its “stark, realistic portrayal of addicts’ experiences with each other” as American critic Roger Ebert said. The triumph continued on as well, the film was released around the world, unlike many Scottish films at the time, and even received an Academy award nominee for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ and a National Board Of Review nominee for ‘Best Picture.’ Trainspotting may not have won the awards, but it had certainly won a place in British film history.

The biggest triumph, however, for Trainspotting was the renaissance it had made within British and Scottish cinema. With the film taking a big leap into the mainstream, British films were beginning to be recognised and appreciated around the globe. British films were never considered to be big budgeted and many were most likely unknown to members of the public. It was then after Trainspotting was released that the British film industry started to grow, with more films being made and bigger budgets allowing the films to stretch out even further. Throughout the last decade, blockbusters have been rivalling with British films and critics have often praised the techniques the directors have used to make films instantly recognisable as British.

Of course, there were negative views of Trainspotting. Being a film simply about the drug culture in Glasgow, there was much controversy over its messages and values and whether it was glamorising the use of drugs to the younger generation or if it was trying to show the effects of what drugs can do to you. As it started to become the film for the teenage generation to have seen, there was some worry about imitation. Many important people made public their dislike for the film, one of the most famous being from U.S senator, Bob Dole. He decried its moral depravity and glorification of drug use during the 1996 U.S presidential campaign, although he later admitted that he had not actually seen the film. Most audiences have now come to the conclusion that Trainspotting didn’t glamorise the use of drugs, but it told the truth and sent out the message to teenagers all over the globe NOT to do drugs.

This film has gone through a load of crap throughout the past decade it has been released, but in the end it is a classic film in the British cinema and you would be a fool not to have seen it. Choose life – Choose Trainspotting!