Trainspotting: A Retrospective
In 1996, the movie adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s 1993 novel Trainspotting was released to the British public. Director Danny Boyle wanted to adapt the novel to capture the painfully honest voice of young people in post-industrial Britain, specifically Scotland, and the film was an instant hit.
Set in Edinburgh, the movie follows Mark Renton, a young Scottish man who has a drug addiction, and his friends Sick Boy, Spud, Begbie, Tommy, and briefly Allison and her baby while they all navigate through their drug-filled, working-class lives. Edinburgh was known for being the creator of most of the world’s opiate drugs during the 1970s and 80s, so it was fitting that the movie was set here.
When Margaret Thatcher was elected as Prime Minister in 1979, she introduced many new policies that affected working-class people in Scotland, such as the Right to Buy. These policies led to a gradual increase in unemployment and poverty, meaning citizens had to find different ways to make their money and spend it. Boyle wanted to express this issue throughout Trainspotting not only in an authentic way, but in a way that humanised the characters and their actions. He wanted to portray Mark and his friends as people escaping their way of life, or lack thereof, rather than villains.
The film opens with Renton and Spud sprinting down Princes Street after stealing from someone. Ewan McGregor’s character Renton delivers the now iconic opening monologue with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, saying, “Choose Life. Choose a Job… But why would I want to do a thing like that?” The monologue expresses that for Scottish people at the time, there was little else to do but try to escape the current way of life through whatever means available, a story that remains relevant even today. In a 2016 study from NRS and Public Health Scotland, it was found that around 2.8% of Glaswegians, aged 15-64, were problem drug users. This statistic was also significant in Edinburgh, with 1.6% of the same age range being drug users. It gets to the point where you must ask yourself: does it make you proud to be Scottish? Or was Renton right in calling us the scum of the f***ing earth?
Throughout the movie, we are shown to multiple occasions where a better life for Renton is alluded to, the first being the iconic ‘Worst Toilet in Scotland’ scene. In this scene, Renton drops his drugs down the toilet, and he reaches in to try to to get them back. He appears to end up all the way down the toilet, which morphs into a surreal underwater fantasy. This shows a version Renton’s life without the drugs, if he let them stay at the bottom of the toilet, never to be seen again. Following this, he goes to his dealer Swanney’s house, where he takes his last hit before quitting drugs for good. However, this results in a near-fatal overdose. Renton is dragged into a ‘carpet coffin’, before being kicked out of Swanney’s house, put in a taxi, and sent to the hospital. Once he is stable, he’s sent home and just left to his own devices. This then raises the question: if not even medical professionals care about people with drug addictions, why should we? However, the characters in Trainspotting are likeable people, so we instead feel bad for them, which is what Danny Boyle wanted to achieve. He succeeded in painting these specific drug addicts as good people with a problem they cannot shift.
Personally, coming from a working-class background in Glasgow, my exposure to drugs is probably above that of the average person, and everyone I know who uses drugs has the same reasons as the boys in Trainspotting. Those who I have spoken to in the past few years of my life spoke of the feeling of drugs, the euphoric high and the happiness that they do not experience in their day-to-day life. When you have virtually nothing, you feel virtually nothing. Drugs have become an escape from that life for many people, whether they want that particular escape or not. Drugs do bad things to good people, but as Renton says, who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?
An example of this in the film is what happens to Tommy. Tommy acts as an advocate for good health throughout the film, and he makes clear efforts to make something out of his life; however, after being dumped by his girlfriend, Tommy joins the others and began taking heroin. He later in the movie contracted AIDS, and later dies from the condition.
Later in the movie, following a heroin deal that makes the boys £16,000 richer, Renton steals the money and leaves his friends behind. His voiceover reveals that it was never about the money, it’s about escaping his working-class, drug-filled life and getting away from all possible temptation, which includes his friends. . The film ends with a reworking of the opening ‘Choose Life’ monologue. It starts with Renton explaining that he’s justified his betrayal to himself a million times, but for every reason, he realises that he is just lying to himself. Following this, he states “…The truth is I’m a bad person, but that’s going to change. I’m going to change.”. He then goes on to say, “I’m going to be just like you. The job, the family…”. This reworking takes the opening monologue’s sarcasm and makes it into one of determination. Finally, the film closes with the line “… getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.” Renton is ready for his new life, and he’s looking forward to it already.