CNM: Trainspotting

The movie Trainspotting,directed by Danny Boyle, is filled with drug addiction, dark humor, and a good reflection of society’s underground operations.

            This film can be classified into many, such as drama, comedy, and crime. Their lives as drug dependent people was the main factor that categorized it as drama, while there where few points in which comedy was present, making it a little light for such a dark crude film.

            The movie opens with two drug addicts (particularly heroin) Spud and Mark, who are both running away by the pursuing store security guards. This whole while, Mark was doing an introductory voiceover, talking about his life, and introducing the other characters, Mark’s circle of friends: Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie and Tomy, who are all either drug addicts or alcoholics. From his introduction, he already hinted that his life wasn’t supposed to be like this, and that he didn’t really choose this lifestyle. His story is compromised of little snippets of happenings, with his friends and drugs and sex as the main factors.

            Throughout the movie, I was really interested in their lifestyle as to why would they make do with that kind of lifestyle, doing drugs all day and living in a barely comfortable place. All five leading men all have distinct characters that they did portrayed well, and their acting was very believable.

            One of the main characters, Renton, decided to quit heroin, and because of that he had experienced a number of violent withdrawals, all the while having diarrhea. After that, Renton and the others decided to use heroin again, but they interrupted when one of their drug-mates Allison’s baby daughter died due to neglect and nobody even noticed it.

            A lot happened after that, including a chain of events of stealing, getting caught and being convicted. Renton was sent into rehab but he escaped and went to his drug dealer’s apartment, where he nearly died due to overdose. He then after that went through another gut-wrenching ordeal of withdrawal, this time with crazy hallucinations like Allison’s baby daughter crawling on the ceiling, him talking to his friends and his fifteen year old girlfriend singing to him. After getting tested and getting a negative in HIV, Rendon moves to London where he lured out all of his friends again. In the end, Rendon goes straight.