Danny Boyle – Trainspotting (1996) Review “Pick 2 different SCENES that are aesthetically powerful, explain why and what elements are formalist and what elements are realist” Based on the novel of the same title by Irvine Welsh situated his story in the late 80s, when unemployment was at an all-time high and the street value of heroin was incredibly low. Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) lists all that the generations have to aspire to: choose life, choose a job, choose a career, choose good health, choose a big television, a washing machine, he makes “choose” sound more like a command than a decision, then offers a rebellious alternative: f** consumerist social conditioning in favor of the Iggy Pop, “Lust for Life” life style. For a man whose …show more content…
There’s elements of formalism as the room elongates, it puts into view the trains on the wallpaper of Rentons room. This is symbolic of the title of the movie and the defition of what trainspotting is, its what they’re doing, because when you shoot up heroin , the heroin leaves a dark linear mark like a track on the affected vein and you can see it go up the vein like a locomotive or train. Lighting can move to more extreme use of color, light and shadow in the creation of subjective Tommy’s shadow take up more space than Tommy himself. The juxtaposition of the young teenage girls singing with the rumblings of what’s about to happen to Renton make things more creepy, especially because the music is not in diegetic to the surface level properties of what’s going on. The music is more upbeat and the girl singing in high notes a happy song opposes the difficulty and sadness that Renton is doomed to go through. “Is he guilty” is said on the TV and he starts to scream. Trainspotting depicts characters engaged in an almost endless cycle of futile and pointless actions, and the question that looms at the end of the film is whether Renton’s final escape and promise to start over will turn out to be futile as