I just read Trainspotting, and after I finished I thought it would be interesting to watch the movie. It brought into high relief everything I loved about the book by eliminating those things entirely, and occasionally replacing them with the opposite sentiment.
Before proceeding, I'd like to explain what I mean when I say "what I loved about the book." I did not love the book. It was an interesting read, somewhat challenging, and I think it made me grow at least a little bit. loved certain moments, and certain successes it had that I'd never seen achieved elsewhere. That said, the parts of it that I didn't feel as strongly towards were not disliked, they just didn't hit me as hard as I think they were meant to.
Never, while reading the book, did I have to take a break because I was
disgusted. This is a major achievement, as Irvine Welsh was writing about some rather disgusting business, and a few disgusting people. But it's crucial that the reader is never disgusted because that disgust distanced me from the plot. I uninvolved myself. I'm disappointed, especially because in the first few minutes we've already got Rents swimming in a sea of human excrement. They milked the episode for shock value to the extent that any real significance was pretty much lost.
Something I was excited about in that part was that Rents was having a surreal vision associated with this. He never really leaves his head like that in the book, so I thought maybe they'd make something of it. Not really. Again, his weird perspective when the floor falls out from under him during his OD could have been interesting too, had the movie given it any meaning.
Speaking of Rent Boy's head... Well, I'll just say that was my favorite part of the book. In the movie, it was his face... Anyways, the way a trivial social analysis would end with an aphorism that showed that there was a full person with a healthy perspective inside of the junkie was the most powerful part of the book. Somehow Welsh managed to create a checked out and useless addict (like anti-drug propaganda wants us to see all of them) and then show that checked out is a choice. Maybe that's not a strong enough word. That checked out is a symptom? I'm not going to site textual evidence because I'm not ready to look at that book again. But for instance, (this was the only part of the book that I actually cried) when Franco and Rents are pissing in the train station and the wino bothers them, and the Rents realizes it was Franco's dad... It's a shared moment of "oh fuck the book's biggest thug gotta have felt something there." In a way this puts Rents above the other characters, who generally don't display random hints of subtle human understanding (except that Sean Connery's opinions on life are clearly the first and last analysis anyone needs) but Rents is also enough of a desperate idiot that it's really all right for him to have one more interesting characteristic. Plus he is the hero.
I'm going to skip to the end, because I'm running out of steam and I believe that the end of a book is the single most important part of it.
In the movie, Rents a) says that he took the money because he's a terrible person b) says he's gonna "choose life" c) gives Spud some of the cash.
Fuck that shit. Now I only finish the book 5 hours ago, and admittedly I was dehydrated and fleeing a bee so maybe I missed something, but those three things bother me greatly. I will address them in opposite order because whim.
C) When Rents takes the cash he is ENDING HIS LIFE IN THE UK AND CUTTING ALL OF HIS TIES. This is really powerful. I've never done anything that drastic and yet the idea of a cut-and-run end to a part of life is a little bit familiar. Though I still love Switzerland for who it made me (indirectly) I do not invest very heavily in it. Rents didn't give anything to Spud in the book, and shouldn't have in the movie. Just admitting that he felt bad for Spud was plenty. Was better. Was in character. Fuck, I don't even like A), but this contradicts it pretty plainly, Hollywood Trash.
B) At the end of the book, I believe Rent says that he's "thinking about" or "looking forward too" life in Amsterdam. From the reviews I read on the internet after having so many feels about the movie, people are really into the "choosing life" monologue. Honestly, I thought it was pretty dumb at the beginning, and even stupider at the end. Again, it breaks his character. And it trivializes his future. "I'm going to go stamp a cookie cutter!"*What bullshit for him to be excited about becoming everyone else.
Okay, at this point I'm really looking at the monologue from a pretty narrow view. I can see that it maybe shouldn't be taken literally or something. I'm gonna stop bitching about it now because just because it didn't do anything for me doesn't mean it was useless for everyone.
I still think it's out of character.
Okay, A) ... Ugh. That's ridiculous. I think that blaming something intrinsic for his actions negates the whole of the plot. It's all about how his friends and circumstances affect him. Taking the money had really obvious causes outside of Rents' moral character. It's annoying to me that Rents himself would think that the main reason he felt the need to take the cash was because he was bad. Especially in the way the movie portray's the lead-up, with Franco's obscene violence. Maybe it's just me, but after that I would leave that world and never go back.
Anyways, I guess I just needed to think about the book and the movie some more.
The movie was not as good as I thought it would be. Cult drug movies usually go over pretty well with me.
The book was powerful. Well worth wading through all that dialect.
A last praise for the book... The emotions were beautifully painted. The were raw and available for the taking. Reading the first chapter, the desperation and pain that Mark and Simon were going through,
actually made me more interested in heroine. I always just thought of it as the worlds harshest painkiller, but the way they needed it, and put up with all that shit for it, gave it dimension. Everything in the movie just made it simpler.
God, how the fuck did they make the death of a baby so meaningless? There was so much to think about in the book.
Okay, yeah, I'm done.
*This is a paraphrase of the use of the choose life monologue at the end. Cookie cutters are never mentioned explicitly
