This weekend I watched Trainspotting for the first time in probably a decade, and these are the thoughts that happened:
- Trainspotting is an after-school special, and aside from the hyperstylized British coolness of it all, it’s just another movie about selfish twenty-somethings. The fact that they happen to do heroin provides the opportunity for a few more gross-out scenes and a lot of preachy preaching— but not about being a dipshit, just about doing heroin.
- But goddamn that club scene is enabling. Even though Diane is 14, she’s still cooler than I am at 28. At this point I have been in any number of clubs and met however many dudes, and none of those encounters even comes close to Diane’s seduction of Renton, even though I was dancing with dudes to “Atomic.” This movie doesn’t over-glamorize heroin, but it sure makes casual sex with strangers who you meet in skeevy clubs seem pretty appealing. I blame a lot of high expectations for nights out on watching this movie repeatedly when I was 15.
- It’s pretty wonderful that Kelly Macdonald now has the strongest career out of all of them.
- Renton is such a shithead, but Ewan McGregor was extremely attractive at 25. He’s good-looking now, sure, but all that time I spent cutting pictures of him out of magazines back then was well-spent.
- Sick Boy was the background of one of my teenage websites (Christian Suburbanite), so I was pretty into him, but now he just looks greasy.
- Why doesn’t my blu-ray player fucking work like a normal DVD player used to. This player— and every other blu-ray player I’ve ever encountered—is a piece of shit waste of money. Everything about this blu-ray just makes me want to tear my hair out.
- The set design in Trainspotting is actually really cool.
- Trainspotting isn’t a great movie, and I can’t believe I let it teach me about being cool, but at least it’s pretty to look at when it’s not busy being gross.
- Oh and the soundtrack is so boss. I didn’t buy the soundtrack at the Wall, but there was a skip on the cd I’d bought elsewhere, so I put one of the extra Wall stickers I had saved from another wrapper on it, and then replaced it at the Wall. I felt like more of a badass doing that than I did when I was doing some of the things that people in this movie do. Thanks, Lifetime Music Guarantee.
