THE HERALD’S FILM CRITIC WILLIAM RUSSELL PANNED TRAINSPOTTING WHEN IT WAS RELEASED. SO HOW DOES HE FEEL ABOUT IT 20 YEARS LATER?

1996: THE REVIEW

THAT much-hyped Scottish film Trainspotting, based on the Irvine Welsh novel, is aptly summed up in the late Sam Goldwyn’s words: “It’s more than magnificent – it’s mediocre.’’ Even that is a kindness. Juvenile, inane, asinine, puerile would be more accurate.

It is not so much the subject matter – drug abuse among Edinburgh’s underclass – which is offensive, for the film does not glamourise the syringe culture. In fact, it tries to take a neutral stance, although how you can do so in a film about drug-taking will puzzle some. What is nauseating is the scatological humour, a kind of poor man’s Carry On at Your Convenience. This includes one junkie inadvertently disgorging his suppositories in the toilet while answering a call of nature and then, realising his error, scrambling about with his hands in the pan to recover them.

It is not a pastime in which many of us indulge. Another high point is when one of the characters discharges in bed and in the subsequent tug-of-war over the sheets with the woman of the house the excrement flies in all directions, including on to the faces of the combatants. I bet Quentin Tarantino wished he had thought of that. What they have done is the equivalent of Martin Amis descending to write an airport sex-buster a la Jackie Collins – only worse. If this film does not bomb in America then my name’s Martin Scorsese.

In Trainspotting everything is ugly and depressing. It is almost emetic. The characters are such an odd bunch they would not qualify as understudies to the inmates of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. This might be forgivable if there was a strong storyline. There is none in the book and only the slenderest in the film.

But we have to safeguard against hype. As Carl Bernstein says: “We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has, bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.’’

Welcome to Trainspotting.

2016: IN HINDSIGHT

WHEN Trainspotting opened in 1996 I dismissed it as “juvenile, inane, asinine, puerile”. Looked at again, Danny Boyle’s black comedy really does mean I need to eat my words. The portrait of the drug culture in parts of Edinburgh that screenwriter John Hodge conjured up from Irvine Welsh’s short stories is sordid, packed with bad language and scatological. Blatantly designed to shock the film duly did but re-seen there is no getting away from the skill with which director Boyle – abetted by a still terrific soundtrack – put it all up on screen.

What shocked me then does not do so now. Trainspotting has recently been put on stage and the overflowing toilet in which the drug stash is hidden, the excrement stained sheets tossed about, the dead baby, the casual sex and violence provoked no audience outrage, just the slightly appalled laughter of people enjoying being safely dangerous.

The film launched the careers of several actors who mostly went on to bigger things. It also created a sort of “cool Scotia” and blew a raspberry in the direction, not as Welsh would have it of a mist-filled Brigadoon Scotland, but of Braveheart, Mel Gibson’s silly blue and white face paint Scottish western, its immediate predecessor.

Trainspotting gave the world a Scotland which had nothing to do with kilts, haggis, Whisky Galore!, rewriting history and blaming the English for all our ills, but I do not think it contributed anything to the independence debate of the years that followed. Those spotty unknowns now have baggage from other roles to contend with when it comes to re-inhabiting the characters and the drug world is no longer another country for audiences, so Trainspotting 2 will be interesting. Sequels can work artistically – French Connection 2 is always cited – but can be just a case of cashing in on past success. What matters is whether Boyle and Hodge have anything new to say. But I was wrong. Trainspotting, even if slightly dated, is still a roller coaster ride.

Everything is ugly and depressing. It is almost emetic