LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Trainspotting: Mark Renton
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``Trainspotting'' is about Renton and his buddies, Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) and Spud (Ewen Bremner), who live lives of stealing, getting high and sleeping. It's not a hopeless existence. They are all capable of getting off drugs, and occasionally they do.
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[N]ot all of what "Trainspotting" depicts is glamorous, and viewers will get a good look at the "misery and desperation and death" that Renton initially dismisses. One character is felled by AIDS. Another goes to prison, albeit briefly. A neglected baby is left to die in her crib. Renton overdoses and nearly dies; after that, he wishes he were dead as he suffers through a nightmarish withdrawal.
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Despite its Scottish character, Trainspotting achieved transnational success. As reviewer Robert Morace indicates, the arresting opening sequence juxtaposes Renton’s Scot diatribe with Iggy Pop’s American drawl13; establishing the inter- and intranational dynamics of the movie. The sequence ... demonstrates the most pervasive quality of the film — the many layers of diegetic sound, or sound that exists within the film’s narrative space. Sound in the backdrop of Trainspotting, unlike the “sounds of society” typical in British realist film — people talking, traffic passing by, machines working, dogs barking — are absent; instead, a “rushing, wind noise”14 replaces the noises of surrounding society and its members. Suggestive both of a type of surreal silence and constant motion, the wind noise plays an essential role in the film’s kinetic, fast-paced energy. Only heard in full effect when all the film’s other sounds disappear, the rushing sound comes directly preceding a realization.
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The first hour of ``Trainspotting'' is funny and energetic, with a modern rock soundtrack pushing the energy and underscoring nearly every scene. The film seems on the verge of something. Then Renton cleans up and goes to London. His mates follow him. And the movie falls down.
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Trainspotting's settings are frequently useful for character analysis. From the amount of film time spent in each of the different types of setting (homes, business establishments and their surroundings, government establishments, and three "outdoors" settings of football pitch, park, and Scottish moor), it is easy to deduce the base of the character's lives and experience. normal." (Hodge 35) Certain sets are integrally tied to specific characters. All of the flats of the heroin users (Swanney's, Forrester's, and Tommy's-- Tommy's flat is of special interest because it changes drastically over the course of the film as the character undergoes a similar change) are in disrepair, and are bare of decoration and furniture, implying that bills are going unpaid and personal goods have been sold off to support habits. In opposition to these stark sets, there is the home of Renton's family, in which every room is filled with at least one pattern print, frequently three or four clashing ones, clearly making a comic statement about the locked-in lives of the resident couple.
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"Trainspotting" avoids the glamorizing versus demonizing trap by looking at drugs from the addict's perspective and emphasizing choice and responsibility. The film opens with a monologue by the main character, Renton, listing a series of life choices. Finding consumerism empty -- and meaningful career options for a working class kid limited -- he chooses heroin.
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Mark Renton