Viking Night: Trainspotting
By Bruce Hall
March 9, 2010
The phony sense of ecstasy one feels from a drug is rivaled only by the indescribable horror of withdrawal. A junkie cannot experience one without the other and a film chronicling the life of one can't either – if it purports to be honest. But brilliant direction by Danny Boyle and an outstanding performance by an ideal cast allow the film to portray the peaks and valleys of its protagonists without lingering at one extreme or the other. Despite the constant drumbeat of misfortune in their lives, each of these individuals at one time or another feels touchingly human, making their camaraderie feel endearing and their debauchery seem sad but genuine. We feel as though we're allowed to pity them without absolving them, laugh at them without condoning their actions and loathe them without ever turning on them. To be honest, every time I see Trainspotting it seems about 30 minutes too short!
The characters as written should be familiar to most people, because even if you've never known someone with an addiction, we all have dependencies at one time or another and they tend to affect us in similar ways. After all, there's a little bit of everyone in everyone, which is the root of compassion and understanding. An occasional willingness to experience the world through the eyes of someone we do not understand is one way to do that and it can make every day - or at least a 90 minute film like Trainspotting - a more illuminating experience.
By the end of the film we get the sense that despite their many hardships there may be hope for Mark Renton and his friends. Not all of them, but maybe for some of them. We may not have the ability to choose our circumstances, but we all have the opportunity to determine how we respond, and we all bear primary responsibility for our own fates. For this reason, it's easy to believe that despite the hardships we all face day to day, there's hope for most of us, too.
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