Trainspotting is nearly unwatchable

Overview

The video essay explores how Trainspotting makes a grim story about heroin addiction feel energetic and even pleasurable—without hiding its consequences.

The film opens with Renton, Sick Boy, and Spud fleeing the police to Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life.” Renton’s “Choose life” monologue mocks the idea that a conventional life is simply a checklist of jobs, family, appliances, and other consumer comforts. The essay notes the irony: rejecting those choices is still a choice, and Renton’s confidence that he can quit heroin is part of a cycle of failed attempts.

Addiction and Its Consequences

The film’s style presents both sides of addiction. Heroin can feel good to the characters, but it also takes over their routines, relationships, and emotional lives. Their interests and connections are repeatedly interrupted or dulled by drugs—from Spud passing out before he can reconcile with his girlfriend to Renton’s instinct to numb himself after Baby Dawn’s death. When Renton later quits, hallucinations bring back the people and pain he has tried to avoid.

The essay also challenges the claim that the film glamorizes drugs. Its vivid energy is set against the ugliness of addiction, including Renton’s notorious dive into “the worst toilet in Scotland” to retrieve suppositories. The film has to show why heroin appeals to its characters for the tragic costs to feel honest.

Music and Perspective

The soundtrack is central to this balance. When the opening chase returns after Baby Dawn’s death, “Lust for Life” gives way to Blur’s more melancholy “Sing.” The scene now carries context the audience lacked the first time around.

The essay reads this musical shift as a change in perspective. At first, viewers share the excitement of an outsider who does not understand the characters. Later, they see them as people whose lives are more than their addiction.

The Meaning of “Trainspotting”

The title’s trainspotting metaphor becomes a way to describe the isolation of addiction: a pastime—or a drug culture—that can be difficult for outsiders to understand. The film uses its energy to draw viewers in, then confronts them with what that energy has been hiding.

Personalities Mentioned

Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, Danny Boyle, Ewan McGregor, Irving Welsh, Andrew Macdonald, Masahiro Hirakubo, and Bobby Gillespie.