Movie addiction has diminishing returns
ONE of the defining films of the mid-1990s, Trainspotting shoved a dirty needle into the arm of Cool Britannia and stuck up two fingers to the notion that successful homegrown films could only be pristine period dramas or feel-good romantic comedies.
Now this belated sequel reuites the holy filmmaking trinity of director Danny Boyle, screenwriter John Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald, with a predominantly Scottish cast on location in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Drawing on Irvine Welsh’s novel Trainspotting and its sequel Porno, the narrative’s whirling camerawork propels embittered characters down a new rabbit hole of nihilistic desire, with vivid visual flourishes, projections, shadows and hallucinogenic flashbacks realising each surrender to addiction’s siren song.
Set to an achingly hip and unabashedly retro soundtrack, this multi-faceted portrait of modern masculinity – fathers estranged from children, impotent husbands, friends torn apart by betrayal – sows the seeds of anguish and reminiscence.
It takes a flabby two hours rather than the original’s lean 93 minutes to follow Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) as he returns home to beg forgiveness from Spud (Ewen Bremner).
Thoughts of revenge course through the veins of reluctant publican Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) when he discovers Renton is back in town.
Meanwhile, psychotic jailbird Begbie (Robert Carlyle) is still seething with rage as he finally glimpses life without bars.
T2 boasts flashes of brilliance – a darkly humorous explosion of bodily fluids, a funding pitch that describes a sauna as “an artisanal bed and breakfast experience” – punctuated by cute visual nods to the first film.
Spud is the trembling, emotional core of the film, as audiences will him to succeed as he struggles to sever ties to heroin and discover selfworth.
But in the ensuing head-on collision of solemn memorial and wistful nostalgia, it’s impossible to escape the sinking realisation that the giddy high of the original isn’t going to be replicated – and that one is merely a tourist in the rose-tinted glow of a glorious past that became a cultural phenomenon.