WARNING:
This review contains spoilers for the film Trainspotting.
I mean, the movie’s been out for over twenty years, but since I can’t really
talk about its sequel without also discussing the original, I thought I’d give
you a head’s up anyway. We good? Good.
Trainspotting
is
one of my all-time favorite movies. It’s one of the few movies out there that
can truly be said to define a generation, but doesn’t necessarily feel like a
product of its time. Director Danny Boyle has been wanting to make a sequel to
this movie for a long time, which makes sense since the book it was based on
also had a sequel, but he wanted to wait until the cast has aged to do it, and
he didn’t want to do it unless the entire original cast was onboard. (Everyone
was, but Boyle and Ewan McGregor had a falling out around the turn of the
century that wasn’t resolved until recently.) There was also the problem of it
being a belated twenty-one years after the fact sequel, which has worked
before, but more often than not just ends up being a trip down memory lane.
Our story takes place
twenty years after the first Trainspotting
and catches us up with what’s happened to the main cast since. Surprise
surprise, things haven’t been going great for anyone. Renton (Ewan McGregor)
has returned to Edinburgh after he suffered a heart attack and his new life in
Amsterdam fell apart, Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller) has graduated from heroin to
cocaine and plans on converting his failing pub into a brothel with his
prostitute girlfriend as the madam, Spud (Ewan Bremner) tried to start his life
anew but relapsed after he failed to keep up with the demands of suburban life,
and violent psychopath Begbie (Robert Carlyle) has broken of a fifteen year
stint in jail for robbery and wants to teach his son the tricks of the trade.
When Renton returns home, neither are happy about what he did to them. (The
first movie ended with Renton betraying his friends by stealing a large sum of
money they got from a huge drug deal and using it to start a new life.) Spud
and Sick Boy eventually come around, but Begbie isn’t so easy to forgive and is
out for blood.
The problem with sequels
made long after their predecessors is that they run the risk of becoming vanity
projects, and for the first half of T2:
Trainspotting, it feels like its steering in that direction. Upon Renton’s
return, he vents to Spud about how quitting heroin hasn’t necessarily made his
life better, and how living a normal life was in some ways just as miserable as
the junky lifestyle he tried to escape. He and Sick Boy start brawling when
they first see each other, but everything is quickly forgiven and soon enough
they start hitting it off again like nothing ever happened and they’re back to
their old antics. This nostalgia is reflected in the cinematography, which many
of the original’s iconic scenes painstakingly recreated, sometimes straight-up
Xeroxed, other times with a sinister or subversive twist, with a few callbacks
to famous lines, musical cues, and set pieces peppered in for good measure. But
just when you thought this was going to be a relapse, it quickly turns into an
intervention, and everyone immediately realizes they have to face the
consequences of their action. A conversation between Renton and Sick Boy
remembering the good old days turns dark when they start reminding each other
of their failures, with Sick Boy reminding Renton of his role in their friend
Tommy’s downward spiral into addiction and eventual death, and Renton reminding
Sick Boy of how his preoccupation with shooting up lead to the neglect and
death of his infant daughter. One of the most haunting scenes is when Renton
and Sick Boy start shooting heroin again while Spud watches in horror from the
hallway.
And that’s when I
realized the kind of misdirection trick the movie was trying to pull. In waxing
nostalgia about the old days, our main characters come to terms with the
consequences of their actions. Where the original Trainspotting was about Renton trying to fix his present in order
to save his future, T2 is all about
reconciling with the past and realizing that the future he endeavored for was.
While Renton has kicked heroin, he’s just replaced it with other, more socially
acceptable addictions. When he enters his old room and puts on one of his old
Iggy Pop records, he turns it off after just one note. He’s not ready to face
the music. There’s also a brilliant scene where Renton invites Spud to go
running with him. Renton barely breaks a sweat while Spud struggles to keep up.
Renton has gotten really good at his running from his problems, while Spud just
lets himself get overpowered by them. There’s even a moment where he rewrites
the famous “choose life” monologue in a modern context, and it cuts right to
the bone.
The thing that struck me
the most, however, is how much of a central character Spud has become. He was
always an important piece of the ensemble with his role being the group’s
moral/emotional center and occasional whipping boy, but was never an active
agent in the narrative. I’m especially pleased by this since Spud was the
character that I related to the most in both movies. Aside from the heroin
addiction, his life story parallels my own pretty closely, and his current
disposition is what I see as a worst-case scenario of my own life in twenty
years. (Again, minus the heroin.) There’s even a pivotal plot point where he
finds a new lease in life by pursuing writing.
Overall, T2: Trainspotting is a worthy sequel
that’s simultaneously familiar and fresh, taking the old cloth of its
predecessor and fashioning it into something new. The cast fall back into their
old roles with ease, Danny Boyle’s direction has improved immensely (which is
saying something since the directing in Trainspotting
is master-class), and revisits the past that would’ve come off as pathetic and
cringey in the hands of a lesser director. It’s not something I really asked
for, but I’m glad it exists.
8/10
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