Trainspotting Danny Boyle
Despite being criticised for glamorising drug use, Trainspotting highlights primarily the divorce of drug users from humanity. The film displays the underground of drug culture of Scotland, warts and all, in order to condemn the practise which destroys thousands of lives.
The film Trainspotting was marketed towards a much larger audience to make filming more lucrative and so it was altered slightly from the novel of which it was adapted from. The intended audience is primarily males aged around 15-25 as the character Renton personifies many of the stereotypical aspects of being a young male; alienation from society, looking for a girlfriend, loyalty and camaraderie for friends.
Trainspotting is set mainly in Edinburgh, Scotland during the late 1980s where there is a strong underground culture for heroin addicts. The story focuses around high-functioning heroin addict, Mark Rent-Boy Renton, a young man truly immersed in the underground culture that he has grown to despise many of his closest friends who are all also addicts; be it heroin, alcohol, violence or exercise. Mark acts as the voice of relative sanity as he attempts to escape addiction. While this feat is attempted by most addicts, few prevail as they end their habit with one last hit, however every hit is an addicts last.
The main theme in Trainspotting is choosing life or to be more accurate to be or not to be. In the films opening, Mark narrates with a speech about the pressure on members of society to conform to societal ideals, Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television Mark suggests that people buy into this lifestyle, becoming consumers, just to belong to the masses of society. Mark goes on to say that he chose not to choose life for no reason. He exchanged a normal life with the limbo of the living dead as heroin consumed his life; focusing on nothing but where he would get the next hit. By not choosing life Mark has become divorced from humanity as he decided that when youve got a sincere and truthful junk habit you are suddenly obliged to worry about human relationships and other things that dont really matter. It is therefore fair to say that Renton isnt a member of society.
Mark also expresses anti-nationalistic feelings towards his own country. When Marks friend offers the group the fresh air of the highlands and enquires Doesnt it make you proud to be Scottish? Mark replies, Its shite being Scottish! Were the lowest of the low With this self-deprecating attitude towards his own strongly nationalistic home-land, it would appear that Mark has no positive feelings towards anything other than his ambivalent relationship with heroin.
The only group of any substance is within the group of heroin users whom act as a sort of support network for its members, however weak and circumstantial it maybe. After Tommy asks for his first hit of heroin he soon enters a downward spiral as he becomes a hermit in his flat. Without any support he standard of living drops considerably. After Tommy contracts HIV from sharing needles he is demonised by all, even outside of his flat there is graffiti with an arrow pointing to the door that reads AIDs junky scum and Plague across the door. Tommy is eventually killed by toxoplasmosis, ironically from the only life that stayed with him; a kitten that he neglects.
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