Trainspotting is a
1996 Scottish
film directed by
Danny Boyle based on
the novel
of the same name by
Irvine Welsh.
The movie follows a
group of heroin addicts in a late 1980s
economically depressed area of
Edinburgh
and their passage through life. The film
stars
Ewan McGregor as Mark Renton,
Ewen Bremner as Spud,
Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy,
Kevin McKidd as Tommy,
Robert Carlyle as Begbie, and
Kelly Macdonald as Diane. Author
Irvine Welsh also has a
cameo appearance as hapless drug dealer
Mikey Forrester.
The
Academy Award-nominated
screenplay, by
John Hodge,
was adapted from Welsh's novel. It does not contain any references
to the hobby of
train spotting.
The title is a
reference to an episode in the original book (not included in the
film) where Begbie and Renton meet "an auld drunkard" who turns out
to be Begbie's estranged father, in the disused Leith Central
railway station
, which they are visiting to use as a toilet.
He asks them if they are "trainspottin'." The title also relates to
obsessive behavior and to a slang term to inject or "mainline"
heroin. Beyond drug addiction, other concurrent themes in the film
are exploration of the urban poverty and squalor, in "culturally
rich" Edinburgh.
The film has been ranked 10th spot by the
British Film Institute (BFI) in its
list of
Top 100 British
films of all time. The film was voted in 2004 the best
Scottish film of all time.
The plot
Set in
Edinburgh, the film begins with a narration from Mark Renton
(McGregor) while he and his friend Spud (Bremner) run down Princes Street
pursued by security guards. Renton states
that unlike people who "choose life" (i.e. a traditional family
lifestyle with children, financial stability and material
possessions), he and his friends prefer to live in a constant drug
haze. We are introduced to his friends: con artist Sick Boy
(
Jonny Lee Miller), clean-cut
footballer Tommy (McKidd) and violent
sociopath Francis Begbie
(Carlyle). Sick Boy, Spud and Renton are all heroin addicts, while
Tommy and Begbie openly criticize heroin use.
In the second scene, Renton decides to quit heroin. He buys opium
rectal suppositories from Mikey Forrester (
Irvine Welsh) which he uses right away, but has
to retrieve them from a filthy lavatory when he is struck with
diarrhea. After this "final hit", he locks himself into a room to
undergo
withdrawal.
After quitting heroin, Renton continues to struggle as he's forced
to adapt to the conventional lifestyle from which he has become so
disconnected. His "friendship" with Begbie is illustrated when
Begbie casually throws his pint glass off a bar balcony, injuring a
woman and causing a violent brawl. Renton later joins his friends
and goes to a
dance club in pursuit of
sex. Spud gets drunk and is dragged home by his girlfriend, Gail
(
Shirley Henderson). When Gail
tries to have sex, Spud passes out and defecates all over her bed.
Tommy goes home with his girlfriend Lizzy (Pauline Lynch) but this
results in a violent argument when they discover that a sex tape
they had made of themselves has gone missing (in an earlier scene,
Renton steals the tape). Tommy mistakenly believes he accidentally
returned the video to the rental store, this eventually causes
Lizzy to break up with him.
At the club, Renton flirts with a girl named Diane (Macdonald), who
quickly dissects his bad chat-up lines, but takes him home anyway.
After the two have sex, Diane refuses to let Renton sleep in her
bed; the next morning, Renton discovers that this is because Diane
is actually a schoolgirl living with her parents and under the
age of consent.
Diane then
blackmails him into staying in
contact lest she call the police and inform them of their one-night
stand.
Tired of sobriety, Sick Boy, Spud and Renton decide to get back on
heroin. Through a
montage we see them
taking and dealing drugs and stealing to fund their habit. Renton
narrates that they tried all chemicals available in the streets,
claiming "we would've injected
Vitamin C
if only they'd made it illegal." Depressed after having been dumped
by his girlfriend, Tommy also takes up heroin, which Renton
reluctantly supplies him with. Their heroin-induced stupor is
violently interrupted when fellow junkie Allison discovers that her
baby daughter, Dawn, has died from neglect; Dawn had stayed in the
flat with them but they had been too high to look after her. All
are horrified, especially Sick Boy, who is revealed as Dawn's
father.
Renton and Spud are later caught stealing from a shop and are
pursued by security guards and captured, as seen in the opening
scene of the film. Spud is given a prison sentence but Renton
avoids punishment by enlisting in a
Drug Interventions Programme,
where he is put through a gradual rehabilitation and supplied with
methadone.
Despite support from his friends and parents, Renton is continually
depressed and ends up back in the flat of his dealer Swanney
(
Peter Mullan) after running away from
rehab. He takes too much heroin and
overdoses — Swanney puts him in a taxi and the
driver leaves him on the ground outside a hospital, where his life
is saved. Seeing no other option, Renton's parents take him home
and lock him in his own bedroom to beat the addiction
cold turkey.
Renton lies in his bed and goes through severe withdrawal symptoms,
and sees several hallucinations, including Begbie threatening to
"kick [the heroin] out" of his system, Spud in chains, and Tommy,
who is now an addict. Finally Renton sees Dawn, Allison's dead
baby, crawling toward him on the ceiling while he screams and cries
for his mother. This is inter-cut with a bizarre imagined TV game
show in which the host
Dale Winton asks
Renton's mother and father, "Is he guilty… or not guilty?".
Clean of heroin, Renton feels no purpose in life. He visits Tommy,
who had tested positive for
HIV, in his dark and
filthy apartment.
On Diane's advice, Renton moves to London
and starts a
job as a property letting agent. He continues his sobriety
while enjoying the vibrancy of London and saving up money on the
side, while corresponding with Diane. His happiness is again
short-lived, however; Begbie commits an armed robbery and arrives
at Renton's London flat seeking a hiding place from the police.
Sick Boy also shows up and Renton feels increasingly frustrated
that he cannot turn his "mates" away, despite the fact that they
steal from him, wreck his flat and are a general nuisance.
Seeking to
be rid of them, he puts them up in a property he is responsible for
until they learn of Tommy's death from toxoplasmosis and travel back to Scotland
for his
funeral.
Back in Edinburgh, they meet Spud, who has been released from
prison. Sick Boy suggests a large and dangerous opportunity for
them; the chance to buy two kilos of heroin for
£4,000 and travel back to London to sell it for up to
£20,000. Sick Boy needs Renton's help to afford the initial £4,000
and, after they buy it, Begbie makes Renton inject some of the
heroin to make sure that it is good. The four travel to London and
sell the heroin to a professional heroin dealer for £16,000. They
go to a pub to celebrate, but the mood is broken when Begbie
savagely attacks a fellow drinker. As his friends try to stop this,
Begbie accidentally slices Spud's hand open with a knife. Renton is
already considering taking all the £16,000 for himself, and this
incident convinces him to go through with the plan.
Early the next morning, Renton pulls the bag of money away from a
sleeping Begbie. Spud wakes up and sees this happening but remains
silent as Renton leaves. Narrating, Renton vows to live the stable,
traditional life he described at the beginning of the film as he
walks through London in the sunrise. When Begbie awakes and
discovers the money is missing, he smashes apart the room in a rage
— the last time we see him, police are banging on his door and he
is pulling out a knife. In the final scene, Spud later finds £2,000
left for him by Renton in a locker.
Cast
Production
Producer Andrew Macdonald read the book and turned it on to
director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge in February 1994. Boyle
was excited by its potential to be the "most energetic film you've
ever seen - about something that ultimately ends up in purgatory or
worse". Hodge read it and made it his goal to "produce a screenplay
which would seem to have a beginning, a middle and an end, would
last 90 minutes and would convey at least some of the spirit and
the content of the book". Macdonald secured financing from
Channel 4, a British television station known for
funding independent films. According to Boyle, for the role of
Renton, they wanted somebody who had the quality "
Michael Caine's got in
Alfie and
Malcolm McDowell's got in
A Clockwork Orange" - a
repulsive character with charm "that makes you feel deeply
ambiguous about what he's doing". Ewan McGregor was cast in the
part and shaved his head and lost 26 pounds for the film. In
addition, he read books on crack and heroin. Then, he went to
Glasgow and met people from the Calton Athletic Recovery Group, an
organization of recovering heroin addicts. There, he took classes
on how to cook up a shot of drugs using glucose powder.
Trainspotting was shot in the summer of 1995 over seven
weeks on a budget of $2.5 million with the cast and crew working
out of an abandoned cigarette factory in Glasgow. Due to a lack of
budget and time, most scenes were done in one take and the effects
were achieved practically. For example, when Renton sinks into the
floor after overdosing on heroin, the crew built a platform above a
trap door and lowered the actor down.
Macdonald worked with
Miramax Films to
sell the film as a British
Pulp
Fiction, flooding the market with postcards, posters,
books, soundtrack albums, and a revamped music video for "
Lust for Life" by
Iggy
Pop directed by Boyle.
Upon its initial release in the United States, the first 20 minutes
of
Trainspotting were re-edited with alternate dialogue.
Because of the strong
Scottish
accents and language of the characters, it was believed that
American audiences might have difficulty understanding them. In
addition, to ensure that the film received an R rating, Boyle
trimmed two scenes: a needle going into a vein on an arm and Kelly
Macdonald straddling McGregor during an orgasm. The original
dialogue was later restored on the
Criterion Collection laser disc in 1997
and then on the re-release of the "Director's Cut (The Collector's
Edition)" DVD in 2004.
Filming locations
Despite
being set in Edinburgh, almost all of the film was filmed in
Glasgow
, apart from the opening scenes of the film which
were filmed in Edinburgh, and the final scenes which were filmed in
London.
Notable locations in the film include:
- The
iconic opening scene showing Renton and Spud being chased by store
detectives was filmed on Princes Street, Edinburgh. A scene showing the actual theft
was filmed in the music department of the since-closed John Menzies, also on Princes Street, but did
not make the final cut.
- The
scene where the chase ends is on Calton Road, Edinburgh, near the
rear entrance of Waverley
Station
.
- The
park where Sick Boy and Renton discuss James
Bond, Sean Connery, and
The Name of the
Rose is Rouken Glen Park,
near Thornliebank
. The park was also the site of the grave in
Boyle's previous film Shallow
Grave.
- Corrour railway station
is the setting for the "great outdoors" scene in
the film.
- The
flat that Renton shows the young couple around when he gets the job
as an estate agent and ultimately stashes Begbie and Sickboy in is
78A Talgarth Road at North End Road, London, opposite West
Kensington tube station
, part of the A4 road
.
- The
scenes where they do their drug deal takes place in Bayswater
. The scene where they parody The Beatles Abbey
Road takes place as they walk out of Smallbrook Mews
across Craven Road to the Royal Eagle, 26–30 Craven Road,
Bayswater.
- The
school attended by Diane is Jordanhill
in Glasgow's West End.
Soundtracks
The Trainspotting
soundtracks were two best-selling albums of music centered
around the film. The first is a collection of songs featured in the
film, while the second includes those left out from the first
soundtrack and extra songs that inspired the filmmakers during
production.
Reaction
Trainspotting was screened at the
1996 Cannes Film Festival but was
shown out of competition because, according to the filmmakers, of
its subject matter. However, it went on to become the festival's
one unqualified critical and popular hit. The film made ₤12 million
in the domestic market and $72 million internationally. By the time
it opened in North America, on July 19, 1996, the film had made
more than $18 million in the UK. It initially opened in eight
theaters and on its first weekend grossed $33,000 per screen. The
film finally made $16.4 million in North America. At the time of
its release,
Trainspotting was the second highest-grossing
British-made film in England, after
Four Weddings and a
Funeral.
Critical reception
In the United Kingdom,
Trainspotting garnered almost
universal praise from critics. In his review for
The Guardian, Derek Malcolm gave the film
credit for actually tapping into the youth subculture of the time
and felt that it was "an extraordinary achievement and a
breakthrough British film".
Empire magazine gave the film five
out of five stars and described the film as "something Britain can
be proud of and Hollywood must be afraid of.
If we Brits can make
movies this good about subjects this horrific, what chance does
Tinseltown
have?"
American film critic
Roger Ebert gave
the film three out of four stars and praised its portrayal of
addicts' experiences with each other. In his review for the
Los Angeles Times,
Kenneth Turan wrote, "in McGregor ... the film has an actor whose
magnetism monopolizes our attention no matter what".
Entertainment Weekly gave the film
an "A" rating and
Owen Gleiberman
wrote, "Like
Scorsese and
Tarantino, Boyle uses pop songs as
rhapsodic mood enhancers, though in his own ravey-hypnotic style.
Whether he's staging a fumbly sex montage to
Sleeper's version of
Atomic or
having Renton go cold turkey to the ominous slow build of
Underworld's
Dark and Long ...
Trainspotting keeps us wired to the pulse of its
characters' passions". In her review for
The New York Times,
Janet Maslin wrote, "
Trainspotting
doesn't have much narrative holding it together. Nor does it really
have the dramatic range to cope with such wild extremes. Most of it
sticks to the same moderate pitch, with entertainment value
enhanced by Mr. Boyle's savvy use of wide angles, bright colors,
attractively clean compositions and a dynamic pop score".
Rolling Stone magazine's
Peter Travers wrote, "the film's flash can't disguise the emptiness
of these blasted lives.
Trainspotting is 90 minutes of raw
power that Boyle and a bang-on cast inject right into the vein". In
his review for the
Washington
Post, Desson Howe wrote, "Without a doubt, this is the
most provocative, enjoyable pop-cultural experience since
Pulp Fiction".
Jonathan Rosenbaum, in his review for the
Chicago Reader, wrote, "Like
Twister and
Independence Day,
this movie is a theme-park ride--though it's a much better one,
basically a series of youthful thrills, spills, chills, and swerves
rather than a story intended to say very much".
Trainspotting has a 89% "Certified Fresh" rating on
Rotten Tomatoes and an 83 metascore
on
Metacritic.
Its release sparked some controversy in some countries, including
the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, as to whether
it promoted drug use or not.
U.S.
Senator Bob
Dole accused it of moral depravity and glorifying drug use
during the
1996 U.S.
presidential campaign, although he later admitted that he had
not actually seen the film. Despite the controversy, it was widely
praised and received a nomination for
Best Adapted
Screenplay in that year's
Academy
Awards.
Time magazine
ranked
Trainspotting as the third best film of 1996.
Legacy
In 1999,
Trainspotting was ranked in the 10th spot by the
British Film Institute (BFI)
in its list of
Top 100 British
films of all time, while in 2004 the magazine
Total Film named it the fourth greatest
British film of all time.
The
Observer polled several filmmakers and film critics who
voted it the best British film in the last 25 years.
In 2004, the film was
voted the best Scottish film of all time by the public in a poll for
The List magazine. Trainspotting has since
developed a
cult following.
Awards
Trainspotting was nominated for three
British Academy Film Awards in
1995, including John Hodge for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film
and Best British Film. Hodge won in his category. Hodge also won
Best Screenplay from the
Evening
Standard British Film Awards.
Ewan McGregor was named Best Actor from
the London Film Critics
Circle, BAFTA Scotland Awards, and Empire magazine. Hodge
was also nominated for an
Academy Award for
Writing Adapted Screenplay but failed to win.
Sequel
Boyle has stated his wish to make a sequel to
Trainspotting which will take place nine years after the
original film, based on Irvine Welsh's sequel,
Porno. He is reportedly waiting until the
original actors themselves age visibly enough to portray the same
characters, ravaged by time; Boyle joked that the natural vanity of
actors would make it a long wait. Ewan McGregor has stated in
interviews that he would not like to make a sequel, due to his
preference for being remembered for the critically acclaimed first
film, and not an inferior sequel.
See also
Notes
- Welsh, 1997, Trainspotting, p. 309.
- Genres in transition British National
Cinema, by Sarah Street, Published by Routledge, 1997. ISBN
0415067359. Page 111.
References
Further reading
- Trainspotting, by Fredric Dannen, John Hodge, Barry
Long, Irvine Welsh. Published by Hyperion, 1997. ISBN
0786882212.
- Trainspotting screenplay by John Hodge
- Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting: A Reader's Guide, by
Robert A. Morace. Published by Continuum International Publishing
Group, 2001. ISBN 082645237X.
- Working-class Fiction: From Chartism to Trainspotting,
by Ian Haywood. Published by Northcote House in association with
the British Council, 1997. ISBN 0746307802.
- Trainspotting: Director, Danny Boyle, by Martin
Stollery. Published by Longman, 2001. ISBN 0582452589.
- Welsh Warner and Cinematic Adaptation
Contemporary Scottish Fictions—Film, Television, and the Novel: Film,
Television and the Novel, by Duncan J. Petrie.
Published by Edinburgh University Press, 2004.ISBN 0748617892.
Page 101-102.
- Screening Trainspotting Irvine Welsh,
by Aaron Kelly. Published by Manchester University Press, 2005.
ISBN 0719066514.Page 68.
- Trainspotting and My Name is Joe Hooked:
Drug War Films in Britain, Canada, and the U.S., by Susan C.
Boyd. Published by Routledge, 2008. ISBN 0415957060. Page
169
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