A Look Back At 'Trainspotting' For Its 30th Anniversary

The four main friend characters from Trainspotting enjoying the outdoors.

Image Source: The Guardian

It’s hard to imagine that it’s been just over 30 years since Ewan McGregor’s feet pounded the pavement and he told us all the reasons to “Choose Life” - or not, all to the words of “Lust for Life” by Iggy Pop. Based on Irvine Welsh’s debut bestselling book by the same name, Trainspotting burst onto the scene in February 1996, and it continues to influence our culture even now.

While reading the book on a plane ride, and taking note of its success as a stage production in 1994, producer Andrew Macdonald saw the potential in making this into a movie, contacted director Danny Boyle, and history was made. Here, I will explain why this is such a historic movie.

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The Choice

Mark Renton smoking in a run-down room

Image Source: The Wordologist

As I mentioned above, the opening scene is a true attention-grabber. With Ewan McGregor’s voice-over and Iggy Pop’s music popping along with the chase scene, the soccer scene, and the shooting-up scene all happening simultaneously, I was immediately hooked. In 1996, I was leaving my teenage years behind, and this is a movie about young adults trying to find themselves.

I understood what Ewan was saying about “choose life”. I had stuck to a pretty straightforward, safe path. But, don’t we all know people who live life more on the edge? Who aren’t as afraid about what others might think about those choices? Mark Renton was giving us the list of what comes with choosing life, and then declaring that he didn’t choose life.

“I chose not to choose life. I chose something else.”

Well, if you’re not choosing life, what else is there? Can you make choices that are not on the beaten path and still have life, or do you fall into the abyss, in this case, heroin addiction? For us young people, making choices in our lives, not necessarily related to drug use, certainly felt like taking steps close to the edge. Or, if we always played it safe, would we regret it later?

The Relationships

Lizzie, Gail, Sick Boy, & Spud

Image Source: IMDb

Despite what Mark Renton, Ewan McGregor’s character, claims, Trainspotting is all about choices and how we relate to life and relationships. Trainspotting follows a very tight-knit group of friends who have known each other since childhood: Mark Renton, “Sick Boy” Simon (Jonny Lee Miller), Daniel “Spud” Murphy (Ewen Bremner), and Thomas “Tommy” Mackenzie (Kevin McKidd). There’s also the “psycho” Francis Begbie (Robert Carlyle). Their friendships are complicated: they claim that they stick together because “he’s a mate. … So, what can you do?” But in the meantime, with the exception of Tommy, they backstab and try to outdo each other. Everyone in the friend group is annoyed with Begbie, but because he’s psychotically violent, they’re too scared to do anything about it. Sick Boy tries to prove how much better he can get off of heroin than Renton can.

“The downside of coming off junk was I knew I would need to mix with my friends again in a state of full consciousness. It was awful. They reminded me so much of myself, I could hardly bear to look at them. Take Sick Boy, for instance. He came off junk at the same time as me - not because he wanted to, you understand, but just to annoy me. Just to show me how easily he could do it, thereby downgrading my own struggle.” - Mark Renton

Renton, seeing an opportunity to make money, allows Tommy to buy heroin from him, leading to his demise. But, they do drugs together, play soccer together, go hiking together, and go clubbing together. Even with their crazy personalities, they are certainly loyal to each other.

Mark Renton sitting down in front of his parents.

Image Source: The Economist

The way they play into their friendships with each other also plays into their other relationships with their families and girlfriends. Renton is perfectly OK with stealing straight from his parents with whom he still lives, justifying it by pointing out that his mother “who is, in her own domestic and socially acceptable way also a drug addict”, as she takes Valium. In the thirty years since Trainspotting debuted, there has been a wide-scale opiate drug addiction problem due to pain medications being over-prescribed, leading to more heroin and fentanyl drug use, according the the United States Centers for Disease Control. Unfortunately, this is a problem that many have had to face in real life; certainly not a choice they would have purposely made.

Spud is in a long-term relationship with Gail. This relationship is also depicted in the movie’s twenty-year in-the-making sequel, T2: Trainspotting, which is based on the book Porno by Irvine Welsh. His is the one lasting relationship between the friends, despite certain messy breakfasts (IYKYK!). Sick Boy and Allison had a baby together, Dawn, who dies of neglect due to her parents’ drug use. However, Sick Boy never admits to being Dawn’s father. Begbie has no relationships, but when he out at the club, he ends up kissing a transvestite person, causing him to react violently. Mark Renton has a whole different point of view of this, as he thinks to himself in a voice-over:

“You see if you ask me we're heterosexual by default, not by decision. It's just a question of who you fancy. It's all about aesthetics and it's fuck all to do with morality. But you try telling Begbie that.”

When Renton tells him that he may have enjoyed it, Begbie threatens Renton. This is long before the days when coming out to your friends was generally not done, and Robert Carlyle told director Danny Boyle that he wanted to play his character as a closeted homosexual. Tommy had a long-standing relationship with Lizzy, but she dumps him after the sex tape they made together goes missing (thanks to Renton) and they think it got returned to the video shop. Mark ends up in a relationship with Diane, who turns out to be a teenage high-schooler. She threatens to tell the police about him if Mark does not continue seeing her. For as young as she is, it is Diane who convinces Mark to get off of heroin and start over.

Reinvention

The four friends walking across Abbey Road wearing suits and carrying bags.

Image Source: Cinematictastes.wordpress.com

Can you ever really change? The last act of the movie shows our group of friends trying to do that. Spud goes through a potentially life-changing event when he is sentenced to jail time for shoplifting. As soon as he gets out, he goes right back to drug use. To be fair, Spud goes to jail because he does not commit to a drug treatment program; he knows who he is, and he doesn’t try to hide it. Mark, on the other hand, does go to drug treatment instead of jail, which leads to him overdosing. Because of his overdose, his parents go hard on him and force him to quit heroin cold-turkey. Diane tells him that

Diane: You're not getting any younger, Mark. The world's changing. Music's changing. Even drugs are changing. You can't stay in here all day dreaming about heroin and Ziggy Pop.

Mark: It's Iggy Pop.

Diane: Whatever. I mean, the guy's dead anyway.

Mark: Iggy Pop's not dead. He toured last year! Tommy went to see him.

Diane: The point is, you've got to find something new.

So, Mark goes off of drugs, goes off to London, and gets a job in real estate. Everything goes smoothly until Begbie comes to him so he can hide from the police, and Sick Boy, who had been looking to reinvent himself as a pimp and drug dealer, comes to live with him, too. They all end up back in Edinburgh and back on drugs.

Tommy shows the most reinvention. Mark describes him at the beginning of the film that, “It was one of his major weaknesses: he never told lies, never took drugs, and never cheated.” But, after Lizzy breaks up with him, Tommy gets Renton to get him heroin for the first time. Tommy goes from being the clean, athletic one to an addicted, AIDS-infected shell of his former self, before tragically dying alone.

Mark Renton smiling as he carries his bag and walks away

Image Source:  Haunted Jukebox

So why would anyone still like this movie after thirty years? It is a merry-go-round of addiction with a group of very unlikable people. I would suppose that the final scene, with “Born Slippy” by Underworld pumping in the background, showing Renton walking out with enough money to rebuild his life, finally choosing life after the ultimate act to separate himself from his friends, gives us all some hope. And who doesn’t like to root for the antihero?

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