Trainspotting

Written a couple of years ago and featured in University zine.

Trainspotting

“One bottle of valium, which I have already procured from my mother, who is, in her own domestic and socially acceptable way, also a drug addict” – Renton

Danny Boyle’s influential and darkly humorous 1994 film Trainspotting was an adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel following the bleak existence of a group of Edinburgh junkies and Ewan McGregor’s anti-hero Mark Renton. Released in 1995 under a wave of hype from the British music press and accompanied by a quintessentially Britpop soundtrack, featuring the likes of Sleeper, Elastica and Pulp. It was at the time to film what Britpop was to music, proof that Britain was artistically thriving again. It was the film of the year. The orange, white and black promotion poster appeared everywhere, making unlikely icons out of Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, Tommy, Begbie and Diane. Every Indie teenager and student bedroom wall had one, a Che Guevara for a new generation, mine in particular coming free with an issue of Melody Maker.

Being just 13 at the time of the films release, I was five years too young to see it.
“You’re too young”.
“I’m too young for what?”.
To me it seemed like Trainspotting was everywhere, and I wasn’t old enough, or even looking old enough to see it, at least until video release. My mother rented the film for me one Saturday night when she and my father were out. I’m not sure if she was aware to the films content or whether this was just another example of my parent’s liberal view of raising a teenager. I don’t think even I was aware of what it was I would see. It was stark and shocking with a bleak humour, more so to a 13 year old girl, even one who considered herself more of the world than the rest of her age group. I wasn’t shocked. My eyes were opened and I became aware of a way of life, a culture, a reality, a whole image, in film making and in society. Here was an image that complemented the music I listened too, the words I read and was more real to me than what was usually force-fed to people of my age. It set me above the others, my school friends, my peers, so I thought, the ones who I already had no respect for.

I knew that none of Trainspotting’s characters could be classed as role-models. Icons they indeed were, images for bedroom walls and for film history. Except maybe, for me there could be Diane. Kelly MacDonald was the Edinburgh school girl picked to play the part of Diane. Her character was not even on screen that often, but she was as prominent on that poster as they were but in my eyes much, much cooler. Diane standing by the bar in that silver dress, smoking, looking around with that air of superiority is, for me, the highlight of the film. Mark Renton had fallen in love and so had I. She was cool, coy, witty, sarcastic and as sharp as her cheekbones; a sexy, intelligent young woman by night and an innocent, childish school girl by day. I had that short brown bob tucked neatly behind my ears and I wanted that sparkly silver dress. Unlike most girls my age I had the chest to carry it off but not the occasion to wear it. I was no Diane, as much as I wanted to be.

Watching Trainspotting now, almost 10 years later, it strikes me how dated it’s become. It’s firmly placed in the mid-nineties by its Britpop soundtrack and its fashion. Edinburgh has changed, no longer so run down, the city had been rejuvenated in recent years and to me, having lived in Edinburgh recently, little in the film is recognisable. There being one exception as Renton and Spud flee from their shoplifting spree past Boots on Princes Street. This sequence is where my familiarity begins and ends, in a part of Edinburgh so easily recognisable to me that whenever I walked there I was instantly taken back to that scene and as long as that Boots sign remains the same, always will be.Trainspotting will remain the film of a generation who took back their British culture and made it cool again, in film, music and literature. While the bands of the time fade away, Trainspotting remains an influential cult film that documents the time in which it was made, the music that accompanied it and the faces that made its name, but most importantly, it encapsulates a generations youth.