"The world changes, eh? Even if we don't…"
~ Francis Begbie, T2.
It's always good when you can get a new experience from re-watching a film, and T2 Trainspotting is a fine example. After not knowing what to expect the first time round and being bombarded with the twenty years of catching up that Boyle, Hodge and Welsh throw at the audience, my second-pass was a quieter, even more isolating watch. Not more poignant exactly, but knowing the destination means you can enjoy the journey more and take in the scenery*1.
Away from the attention-grabbing, gurning bromance between Ewan McGregor and Johnny Lee Miller, this is really Robert Carlyle and Ewen Bremner's film. Begbie and Spud are the half of the original gang who actually manage to achieve some level of advancement from everything that occurs. And while I'd initially thought the movie was beating nostalgia with a harsh stick (being a large part of the reason that Renton and Sickboy find themselves caught in the same failing behavioural loops), it became clear that a more focused, objective nostalgia is the very thing which allows Spud to move forward with his life. And while Begbie still has some way to go by the closing credits, his character develops more in those two hours than it has in his previous fifteen years.
Although on the subject of the former two, that the scene in the King William Arms where Renton and Sick Boy improvise a sectarian musical number in the process of robbing and entire pub is excruciating. Utterly masterful and utterly excruciating. An underhanded confidence-trick played once on the page, it's amplified through by the screenplay to become so unfeasible that it somehow just works completely. All the while underlining the character-flaws in everybody on the screen. T2 embodies a pastime which has been made more popular and accessible than ever in the twenty-first century: looking on in gleeful, satisfied awe at the poor decision-making of others, ignoring the quiet voice at the back of your brain reminding you that you're no better.
I can see this movie getting some serious play at my house...
Maybe not best of everyone involved, but certainly in the top-half of their CV.
Absolutely not.
There isn't.
Level 1: Obi-Wan Kenobi's in this.
Plus, at the end of the movie there's a kid outside Renton's childhood home playing with a toy lightsaber. A blue one as well, so I think it's safe to assume that's a self-referential easter-egg? I mean it'd be a bit weird for someone to bring that to the set and have it be Anakin's saber, wouldn't it?
*1 That said… while I think we'd all agree that Irvine Welsh deserves a repeat appearance in this movie, you'd think that at some point in the last twenty years he'd have taken some acting lessons, no? And while I'm on, in that scene where Spud steps out of the boxing-gym and has a flashback looking down the road, the repeatedly alternating camera-angles make the continuity-gaffe with his sweatshirt (on/off his shoulder) glaringly obvious. And also while I'm on moaning, can someone have a gentle word with Danny Boyle and point out that soundtracking a film by hitting shuffle on your iPod only works if you have good taste in music to begin with? Much like its predecessor, T2's soundtrack features three good tunes and the rest is padded out with bland filler. Ridiculous. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
"Nostalgia. That's why you're here. You're a tourist in your own youth…"
~ Simon 'Sick Boy' Williamson, T2.
If only all sequels were as self-aware. Packed with callbacks and flashbacks, director Danny Boyle, screenwriter John Hodge and author Irvine Welsh's long awaited sequel rolls into the station twenty one years after the last service. While the film is far from a rehash, it relies heavily on the dynamics (and clips) of its predecessor to exist. It also doesn't care whether that bothers you or not. With Renton (Ewan McGregor) back from his nervous exile in Amsterdam, Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller) now running his aunt's pub in Leith, Spud (Ewen Bremner) still struggling to stay off heroin and Begbie (Robert Carlyle) freshly out of prison, the boys are older but absolutely no wiser. As coincidence and desperation join forces to push the four back together again, Sick Boy's latest girlfriend/business partner Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova) acts as the prism through which we get reacquainted. With scores to settle and new deals on the table, the boys are back in town…
This is, it has to be said, a film for fans of Trainspotting. As you might well expect. Occasionally too fixated on its predecessor for its own good, but that's all part of the forced nostalgia vibe, as quoted above. Not as much 'fun' as 1996 outing, but certainly not as prone to utter despair, either. This is the film that's realised it's apparently grown up and doesn't know how it's supposed to act, a feeling which will probably resonate with Generations X and Y in the audience. The screenplay borrows from Welsh's sequel novel Porno and retrospectively from Trainspotting without committing to being a true adaptation of either. As befits the characters we know and love/hate.
The four leads pick up the reins effortlessly, inhabiting their old personas with an ingrained weariness that is no doubt helped by twenty years of being a jobbing actor. Various secondary-characters from the first movie pop up, with screen-time not unlike that which they had the last time (I'm fairly certain they only feel so familiar to me because of how many times I've watched Trainspotting over the years). And threatening to outshine them all is the aforementioned Anjela Nedyalkova, but sadly we don't get to know Veronika as much as I'd have liked. Although given her role in the film, I suspect that's entirely intentional.
In T2*1, echoes of a shared past rearrange into the mistakes of the present and regrets of the future. In any other film this could be lazy writing, but here it's a sign that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Like gangsters, psychopaths and monsters, we can spend time with this bunch of utter misfits in the cinema so that we don't have to associate with them in real life. Grinning at their excesses, wincing at their follies and laughing at their stupidity.
Compelling yet charmless; gloriously and selfishly nihilistic. T2 Trainspotting is, in the best way, a film which stopped giving a fuck two decades before it was made. Choose life, indeed...
*1 Although while I'm on, what kind of title is "T2 Trainspotting", anyway? Obviously you can't properly market a film called 'Porno', but at least have a think about what rolls off the tongue, eh?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
