Bursting onto the scene with thunderous aplomb, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting made huge cultural waves over here in the U.K, depicting the lives of Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) and his gang of heroin-addicted friends in all their ecstasy and agony. From the very opening, the explosive drumbeats of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” pound along with Renton as he sprints through a crowded Edinburgh high street, setting the tone for a tumultuous tale of woe, friendship, and addiction. Upon its release in 1996, Trainspotting was more than a little polarising, at times being heralded as the champion of a new wave of British cinema while also being torn apart for its subject matter and alleged glorification of heroin addiction. One thing was for sure, Danny Boyle’s adaptation of the Irvine Welsh novel of the same name was unlike anything we’d seen before, and the momentum it carried has propelled it onward into cinematic history.
It would be remiss not to first mention the political climate in which Trainspotting was born. Set in the late 1980s, with Britain still being governed by Margaret Thatcher, the novel became as much about the perils of drug abuse as a commentary on the desolation of the British working class, which Thatcher was undoubtedly responsible for. The story goes that Welsh himself described Thatcher as a sort of joint author of the novel, as she created the environmental confines which these characters were stuck within, perhaps it’s apt that Renton exclaims “there is no society!” an abject revision of Thatcher’s sentiment of “no such thing as society. Only men and women…”
By the time Boyle’s film debuted in the mid-90s, however, Britain hadn’t exactly moved on. There was certainly no trickle-down wealth for the working classes, as promised by Thatcher. Instead, the ‘90s saw the birth and gauzy-heights of Brit-Pop, a cultural movement that celebrated the artistic and creative work that was made in reaction to the previous, bleak and dividing decade that came before. Bands like Pulp, Oasis, and Blur were achieving critical and commercial acclaim, the underground British rave scene was alive and kicking, and British cinema was in the midst of its own metamorphosis. At the height of all this, in 1996, Trainspotting was released and immediately captured the zeitgeist so firmly, that it became the stand-out British film of the 90s.
The perfect conflux of style and substance, Trainspotting, which had a core audience based off of the hit novel, married the sordid, scabrous commentary and wit of Welsh’s bestseller, with Boyle’s already-established ability to craft vivid and memorable cinematic sequences. Few filmmakers emerge fully formed, but Boyle’s quality was present early on; his eye for a shot, the willingness to look beyond the basic, and of course, his ear for a needle-drop are on full show in Trainspotting. For example, the scene in which Renton overdoses in Swanney’s apartment, played by Peter Mullan. The initial dialogue between the two is charming, eloquent and even funny in moments, Renton and Swanney enact a pseudo-dining experience, with heroin on the menu. Next, the injection itself is framed closely, and as we see the warm expression of euphoria come across Ewan McGregor’s face, he falls back into the floor, as it surreally swallows him whole. We all know the scene, but I implore you to go back and really watch it. The colour palette is perfect, the imagery is nuanced and the decision to drop Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” is dredged in black humour, despite the continuing sequence being far from comedic. While this scene shows the craft of a young filmmaker in Boyle, it also nods to one of the omnipresent qualities of Trainspotting, the deftness of flitting between comedic and tragic, witty and wounding.
The film walks this tight rope with ease, bending genres at its will, drifting between social realism and downright surrealism, never scared of over-committing to the gritty, eye-watering nature of its source material, all while keeping a frenetic, heart-pounding pace. After countless rewatches, the enduring brilliance for me lies in this very quality.
It’s equal parts of its time while also being essentially timeless. That being said, this is not always necessarily a good thing. Trainspotting is a film of protest, a reaction to the mistreatment of a class of people who found themselves with no help and an inability to bridge the ever-growing chasm of disparity in this country.
Fast forward 25 years and how have things changed? Well, it’s not all Sunshine on Leith. The inequality between the working class and the upper class is as pronounced as ever with a huge spike in unemployment for young adults. Add to this, the distrust of the current government officials in the wake of the mishandling of Brexit and of course, COVID, has left a lot of people, myself included, feeling disillusioned and discontent with the current state of affairs.
What is there left to do but to turn to art, turn to film and to music that channels a similar sense of protest, of retaliation, of hope. The rise in these independent art forms is powerful. The once-marginalized voices are now being heard and have a platform not only to express but to educate. It’s far from perfect, but it’s something; it has momentum and more specifically, the right kind of momentum. We have Sarah Gavron’s Rocks, a film that captured the warmth of adolescent friendship and sibling love in the face of a failing social system, Mowgul Mogli, where co-writer/lead Riz Ahmed portrays the complexities of understanding one’s place within their culture and, of course, His House, a revitalising take on the haunted house trope that doubles as a commentary on the U.K migrant crisis. Like Trainspotting before them, these films, and many more, are speaking to the issues that have and continue to plague Britain. They’re articulate, creative and informative, they’re the new British new wave, and they’re here to stay.
Perhaps this is the lasting legacy of a film like Trainspotting; it showcased the lost youth of the working class, warts-and-all, never for a second wallowing in their grief, or in the case of its protagonist, their addiction. Instead, just as the film carries its characters forward, eventually out of the mire, so too did it uplift and champion a cinematic movement in the U.K that now seems to be continuing this cycle.
