In 1996 Trainspotting was the biggest thing in British culture.
Brilliantly and aggressively marketed, it crossed into the mainstream
despite being a black comedy set against the backdrop of heroin
addiction in Edinburgh. Produced by Andrew Macdonald, scripted by John
Hodge and directed by Danny Boyle, the team behind Shallow Grave
(1994), Trainspotting was an adaptation of Irvine Welsh's barbed novel
of the same title. The film is crucial for understanding British culture
in the context of devolution and the rise of 'Cool Britannia'.
Murray Smith unpicks the processes that led to Trainspotting's
enormous success. He isolates various factors - the film's eclectic
soundtrack, its depiction of Scottish identity, its attitude to
deprivation, drugs and violence, its traffic with American cultural
forms, its synthesis of realist and fantastic elements, and its
complicated relationship to 'heritage' - that make Trainspotting such
a vivid document of its time. Although it heralded a false dawn for
British film-making, Trainspotting is, Smith concludes, both
authentically vernacular and yet transnational in its influences and
ambitions.
In his afterword to this new edition, Murray Smith reflects on the
original film 25 years after its release, and its 2017 sequel T2:
Trainspotting also directed by Boyle. Smith also considers Danny
Boyle's subsequent directorial career, with highlights including
Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and the 2012 London Olympics opening
ceremony.
