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Another happy day in Edinburgh... Ewen Bremner, Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle define their careers in the mid-1990s phenomenen |
Cast: Ewan McGregor (Renton), Ewen Bremner (Spud), Jonny Lee Miller (Sick Boy), Robert Carlyle (Begbie), Kevin McKidd (Tommy), Kelly Macdonald (Diane), Peter Mullan (Mother Superior), Eileen Nicholas (Mrs. Renton), James Cosmo (Mr. Renton), Shirley Henderson (Gail Houston), Stuart McQuarrie (Gav), Irvine Welsh (Mikey)

You must
know the story: Ewan McGregor is our “hero” Renton, a junkie with delusions
every so often (the film implies this has occurred multiple times) of going
clean, kicking the habit only to find that he is always drawn back in – largely
it seems due to his own weak personality. Fellow junkies include Spud (Ewan
Bremner), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) and later (tragically) Tommy (Kevin
McKidd). On the edge of their junkie circle (not a user) is psychotic
Begbie (Robert Carlyle) who doesn’t need drugs when he can get a high from
starting a bar fight. The basic plot is slim in this whipper sharp film where
experience is all – Renton goes clean, gets sucked back in, misses prison, goes
cold turkey, escapes to London, gets sucked back into a drug deal. That’s
basically it. What’s important here is the experience.
This is
possibly one of the best films about addiction ever seen (I watched it in a
double bill with The Lost Weekend
which actually works out as a pretty natural combo). Boyle and screenwriter
Andrew Hodge aren’t scared to show that drugs at times can be fun (after all if
they didn’t make you feel good part of the time why would you do them?) and
they can give colour to life (particularly to the shallow non entities this
film centres on). The is even a strange family warmth to Renton and friends getting smacked
out in an otherwise disgusting dilapidated drug pit, listening to Sick Boy dissect the
Sean Connery Bond films. This is then brilliantly counterbalanced by the
appalling lows – from the truly unsettling dead baby, abandoned and unfed in
said drug den, to Renton’s appalling cold turkey.
Perhaps the
most remarkable thing here is that Danny Boyle directs with such verve and with
a gleeful delight for every single shooting and editing trick in the book, but
the film never feels like a triumph of style over substance, or as if the tricks
are the centre of the director’s attention. Instead throughout the whole film you
can tell the heart of the film makers – and therefore the heart of the viewer –
is also focused on the story and the characters. So
we get a film that crackles with energy, with a sense of youthful vitality
(that is vital to understanding its characters), has an attractive
anti-society message – but also reminds us that the perils of following this
kind of counter culture life can be truly horrifying.
At the
centre of this film is Ewan McGregor, who I don’t think has ever
found a role that he could seize and bring to life as successfully as he did
with this one. McGregor is captivating, managing to skilfully demonstrate without
any judgement a man who believes he is strong, but is in fact desperately weak.
His performance is so charismatic that you hardly notice that Renton is,
actually, a pretty nasty person. High or not he has a barely concealed
contempt for nearly everyone around him, his reaction to the baby death is
shockingly cold, his treatment of Tommy laced with indifference, his
pronouncements to the audience overflow with self-regard and
delusion. But you just don’t notice.
What you do
notice is that Robert Carlyle’s Begbie is a total nutter. Just like McGregor, I
think Carlyle struggled to find a role that matched this one, probably not
helped by the string of psychos he was offered by casting directors. Carlyle
again actually isn’t in the film that much, but he nails how terrifying total
self belief can be when matched with a complete lack of any moral sense. In
fact most of the cast have hardly ever been better.
Excellent support also comes from Peter Mullan, Eileen Nicholas, James Cosmo,
Shirley Henderson and Stuart McQuarrie while Irvine Welsh pops up as low rent
dealer.
Electric
film making with a heart, I don’t think even Danny Boyle has topped this. There
is something strangely perfect about this film – anything more and it might out
stay it’s welcome, but every scene has something magic in it, some little touch
that stays in the mind – either performance, dialogue, direction or all three.
It looks fantastic and seemed to define its era. So fingers crossed for the
sequel. No pressure…
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