Trainspotting
1996 · Directed by Danny Boyle
Original language: English
- drama
- crime
The story
Heroin addict Mark Renton stumbles through bad ideas and sobriety attempts with his unreliable friends --Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Tommy. He also has an underage girlfriend, Diane, along for the ride. After cleaning up and moving from Edinburgh to London, Mark finds he can't escape the life he left behind as Begbie and Sick Boy come knocking.
What it’s like
Restless, hyper-kinetic energy with saturated colour and grime-lit squalor: frantic handheld tracking shots, jump cuts, freeze-frames and sudden slow-motion, all pushed along by a loud, needle-drop soundtrack of Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Underworld, with the rush of a club or a toilet-bowl plunge rendered as chaotic sensory overload. Edinburgh looks grey and rain-slicked, while the London scenes turn bright and sterile, and the whole thing carries a darkly comic, sardonic voice that flips between exhilaration and bleak, cold despair. This is a film for a restless night, a sharp-edged rewatch when you want something raw and funny rather than comforting. Its intensity is high: frequent heroin use shown in close, uncomfortable detail, drug withdrawal, brutal and sudden violence, sexual content, and a notoriously harrowing sequence involving a baby. It suits viewers who want a fierce, stylised portrait of addiction and friendship that refuses to be pretty, and it is not gentle or easy company.
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