T2 Trainspotting is a worthy sequel two decades after
I remember watching the first "Trainspotting" back in 1999 during the British Film Festival (now defunct) held at the Shangri-La Plaza Cinema (an international cinema haven then as it still is now). I was just out of college then. About two decades later, who would've thought that director Danny Boyle, screenwriter John Hodge and novelist Irvine Welsh would bring all the main characters together again in a sequel called "T2 Trainspotting" (2017, UK)? In a sense, I practically grew up with these never-do-good and neither-here-nor-there heroin junkies and sociopaths through all these years. Thus, I was one of those who were somehow thrilled when the news of the sequel being made came out. Seeing the sequel would have an added nostalgic feel to it for the generation who was able to watch the first one at the time of its first release, especially when one considers the fact that "Trainspotting" has long been regarded as a generation-defining film.
So, does "T2 Trainspotting" deliver?
I initially thought that I wouldn't be impressed with "T2 Trainspotting". The question at the back of my mind was: Is there a need for a sequel? The attempt at "cash-grab" would be out of consideration already, I suppose, due to a good two decades have passed since the first one and who can really tell if there are those who would be more than eager to see a follow-up. But as I get deeper into the film, it gradually dawns on me that this is certainly one of the best sequels ever made. The twenty-year span before "T2 Trainspotting" came out is definitely well-earned: it feels as if everything has come full circle.
"Trainspotting" left off with a soft-focus close-up of Mark (Ewan McGregor), "choosing life" and walking into the future, after he has stashed away a huge amount of cash from his best friend Simon (aka "Sick Boy", played by Jonny Lee Miller), a fellow heroin addict back then. It's the classic narrative arc of leaving behind the undesirable remnants of one's life to be able to start anew, even if it entails betrayal and deception. "T2 Trainspotting" uses that arc to delve into the themes of being haunted by the ghosts of one's past, settling some old score, nostalgia, mid-life crisis, male friendship and redemption. The result is a film that's equal parts funny, moving, riveting and thrilling. It may not have the gut-punch and pitch-black irreverence of the first one, but it's all the more powerful for its depiction of how time may have been running out already on the hard-luck protagonists. It becomes even more alarming when we think that despite the two decades that came in between, it seems like nothing much has ever changed. As Simon pointed out to Mark in one scene: "Nostalgia, that's why you're here. You're a tourist in your own youth".
Mark (now in his mid-40s, just like his friends, but is actually looking none the older) is really hooked on a different thing this time - and that's remembrance of things past. In what seems like to parallel the addiction to drugs, Mark is drawn back to his old hometown to make a mess of himself. It's hard to get rid of one's old habits, so to speak. But does Mark's "return" really do more harm than good? Well, it may not be, actually. Despite the betrayal, Mark gets to reconcile with his best pal Simon (who's still hooked on junk, this time cocaine and engaged in some nasty blackmailing scheme) and the two are about to put up a business together;while their friend Spud (the Buster Keaton-like Ewen Bremner) does his utmost best to kick the habit and even channels his cold-turkey syndrome into scribbling. Though the psychopathic Francis (aka "Begbie", played by Robert Carlyle) escapes from prison, does some robbery and, once he learns that Mark is back in town (in a quite funny sequence in a night-club toilet), wants him to pay dearly for running away with the loot about twenty years earlier.
Hodge's screenplay (adapted from both of Welsh's novels "Trainspotting" and "Porno") does a good job of making these quartet of anti-heroes sympathetic enough. It's not so much to condone their habit or bad behavior in general as to suggest that it's never too late to get out of the rut. McGregor, Miller, Bremner and Carlyle are wonderfully up to the requirements of their characters. In a sense, these actors have aged with their characters through the years. Stylistically, "T2 Trainspotting" explicitly references the first one by way of flashbacks, magical realism (at least in one scene) and sight gag (the toilet bowl!), which further enhance the nostalgic feeling. Boyle, a filmmaker who's always adept at displaying visual panache, with the aid of frequent collaborator Anthony Dod Mantle (who also did the cinematography of many a Dogme '95 and Lars von Trier film), composes and frames some of the scenes in such a way that suggests the muck and mire that the characters are still treading (like the surroundings of the apartment blocks where the characters live).
As already mentioned above, "Trainspotting" leaves us with a final image that has Mark walking into the "future", which is iconic enough to imply something like that in Truffaut's "The 400 Blows". "T2 Trainspotting", meanwhile, ends with Mark once again, but this time it seems that he has fully reconciled himself with the past, as he walks into the room of his youth, with cut-outs of different locomotives plastered all over the wall (the title of the film now becoming ever clearer than in the first part) and dances to a song played on a vinyl-record player, as the camera moves away from him similar to a train moving forward. Yet again, Mark chooses life.
(Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller settle some old score in Danny Boyle's "T2 Trainspotting")
So, does "T2 Trainspotting" deliver?
I initially thought that I wouldn't be impressed with "T2 Trainspotting". The question at the back of my mind was: Is there a need for a sequel? The attempt at "cash-grab" would be out of consideration already, I suppose, due to a good two decades have passed since the first one and who can really tell if there are those who would be more than eager to see a follow-up. But as I get deeper into the film, it gradually dawns on me that this is certainly one of the best sequels ever made. The twenty-year span before "T2 Trainspotting" came out is definitely well-earned: it feels as if everything has come full circle.
"Trainspotting" left off with a soft-focus close-up of Mark (Ewan McGregor), "choosing life" and walking into the future, after he has stashed away a huge amount of cash from his best friend Simon (aka "Sick Boy", played by Jonny Lee Miller), a fellow heroin addict back then. It's the classic narrative arc of leaving behind the undesirable remnants of one's life to be able to start anew, even if it entails betrayal and deception. "T2 Trainspotting" uses that arc to delve into the themes of being haunted by the ghosts of one's past, settling some old score, nostalgia, mid-life crisis, male friendship and redemption. The result is a film that's equal parts funny, moving, riveting and thrilling. It may not have the gut-punch and pitch-black irreverence of the first one, but it's all the more powerful for its depiction of how time may have been running out already on the hard-luck protagonists. It becomes even more alarming when we think that despite the two decades that came in between, it seems like nothing much has ever changed. As Simon pointed out to Mark in one scene: "Nostalgia, that's why you're here. You're a tourist in your own youth".
Mark (now in his mid-40s, just like his friends, but is actually looking none the older) is really hooked on a different thing this time - and that's remembrance of things past. In what seems like to parallel the addiction to drugs, Mark is drawn back to his old hometown to make a mess of himself. It's hard to get rid of one's old habits, so to speak. But does Mark's "return" really do more harm than good? Well, it may not be, actually. Despite the betrayal, Mark gets to reconcile with his best pal Simon (who's still hooked on junk, this time cocaine and engaged in some nasty blackmailing scheme) and the two are about to put up a business together;while their friend Spud (the Buster Keaton-like Ewen Bremner) does his utmost best to kick the habit and even channels his cold-turkey syndrome into scribbling. Though the psychopathic Francis (aka "Begbie", played by Robert Carlyle) escapes from prison, does some robbery and, once he learns that Mark is back in town (in a quite funny sequence in a night-club toilet), wants him to pay dearly for running away with the loot about twenty years earlier.
Hodge's screenplay (adapted from both of Welsh's novels "Trainspotting" and "Porno") does a good job of making these quartet of anti-heroes sympathetic enough. It's not so much to condone their habit or bad behavior in general as to suggest that it's never too late to get out of the rut. McGregor, Miller, Bremner and Carlyle are wonderfully up to the requirements of their characters. In a sense, these actors have aged with their characters through the years. Stylistically, "T2 Trainspotting" explicitly references the first one by way of flashbacks, magical realism (at least in one scene) and sight gag (the toilet bowl!), which further enhance the nostalgic feeling. Boyle, a filmmaker who's always adept at displaying visual panache, with the aid of frequent collaborator Anthony Dod Mantle (who also did the cinematography of many a Dogme '95 and Lars von Trier film), composes and frames some of the scenes in such a way that suggests the muck and mire that the characters are still treading (like the surroundings of the apartment blocks where the characters live).
As already mentioned above, "Trainspotting" leaves us with a final image that has Mark walking into the "future", which is iconic enough to imply something like that in Truffaut's "The 400 Blows". "T2 Trainspotting", meanwhile, ends with Mark once again, but this time it seems that he has fully reconciled himself with the past, as he walks into the room of his youth, with cut-outs of different locomotives plastered all over the wall (the title of the film now becoming ever clearer than in the first part) and dances to a song played on a vinyl-record player, as the camera moves away from him similar to a train moving forward. Yet again, Mark chooses life.
(Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller settle some old score in Danny Boyle's "T2 Trainspotting")
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