T2 Trainspotting
An ambitious trip down memory lane, or comedic ode to 21st Century disillusion?
To premise this review with a disclaimer: I arrive at T2 without the nostalgia that so many viewers bring to this sequel. I have not been waiting 20 years for this film.
For many, Trainspotting defined a generation — it was British social pessimism at its very finest; the ultimate cinematic portrayal of mid-nineties disaffected youth. In 2017, I watch both films back-to-back for the first time, in a conscious attempt to remove nostalgia from the equation, and offer an impartial take on Boyle’s highly anticipated sequel.
“Where are you from?” T2’s 46-year-old Mark Renton asks a woman outside the airport as he arrives back to Edinburgh from Amsterdam, where he’s been living for the last 20 years. “Slovenia,” she replies, and hands him a tourist brochure. This is not the Edinburgh Renton remembers. It’s faster, cleaner and sharper — but ultimately just as sad.
The plot of T2, loosely adapted from Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting follow-up Porno (2002), is as simple as they come. At the end of Trainspotting (1996), we left Rentboy in the Uncool Britannia of the mid 90s, just as he’d swept the proceeds of a monumental skag deal out from under the feet of his closest friends. Now he’s back, he’s clean, and he’s a marked man. Begbie is on the run after 20 years behind bars, and poor Spud never escaped the claws of addiction; we meet him on the floor of his scuzzy Leith flat, as he tries (and fails) to take his own life.
“Choose watching history repeat itself,” Rentboy urges, “Choose reality TV, slut shaming, revenge porn. Choose a zero hour contract, a two-hour journey to work and choose the same for your kids, only worse.” And it really does seem worse. There’s no denying that the more memorably shocking scenes belong to Trainspotting, but T2’s real terrors lie in the universe it creates. What kind of future does Boyle see for us? Trainspotting’s blows have certainly been softened, as have the edges of its ageing central characters, but their youthful zeal has been quashed too; these are men on the edge.
It’s Johnny Lee Miller’s peroxide-intact Sickboy (now Simon) that burns the brightest by far. He’s the sole member of the original four whose boyish charm and electric energy persists, Miller’s performance in T2 capturing the bleak irony of contemporary British culture effortlessly.
Having traded in heroin for cocaine, his character has spent the last few years running scams with Bulgarian escort (turned partner-in-crime) Veronika. The central four reunite and plan to open a sauna-cum-brothel above the pub that Simon has inherited. Mayhem ensues, complete with masterful betrayal, complementing and simultaneously subverting the plot of the original film.
T2’s monumental soundtrack is the film’s greatest reinforcement of this subversion. The likes of Young Fathers, Fat White Family and Wolf Alice feature right alongside The Clash, Queen and Blondie, and Boyle pauses altogether for a silent tribute to Bowie. “Just looking for a protector,” croons Wolf Alice over the film’s penultimate sequence, “God never reached out in time / There’s love that is a saviour /But that ain’t no love of mine.” Each choice is both brave and nostalgic, paying tribute to the unforgettable lineup that came before it.
This is not a film without fault though; its woeful neglect of female characters being the primary cause for concern. They have fewer lines, less quirk and altogether less punch than their predecessors. Shirley Henderson is tragically underused — I would go as far as to argue that Begbie’s elaborate back-story might reasonably have been replaced by hers.
There’s no separating these two films, and there’s certainly no escaping the raw nostalgia that Trainspotting inflicts upon its audience after just a single viewing. It is a film that is inescapably different; uniquely raw, perfectly overpowering and ultimately addictive. T2 never bites as hard, but in reality, it never tries to.
Albeit an example of a sequel which plays consistently on nostalgia for its predecessor, T2 is observant, poignant and worthwhile, entirely on its own terms. How do you follow a film that is pure homage to repulsive, vibrant adolescence? Boyle answers by forcing focus onto the passing of time, allowing his audience to bask in the pleasure of being a “tourist in their own youth” — and he does it with energy and style. He displays a knack for transforming potentially dismissible men into complex characters, grappling with the realities of friendship, loss and redemption.
In watching these films back to back, the thing that hits hardest is Boyle’s apparent lack of hope for us, the generation that come next. It’s not only the central characters that have decayed, it’s the heinous world around them too, and things are inexplicably far, far worse. When Trainspotting ended, we watched Rentboy run. “I’m cleaning up and I’m moving on” he declared, grinning for his final, blurry close-up.
As T2 comes to a close, though, Renton dances mindlessly to an old song in his old room, as the camera swiftly retreats. Spinning out of focus, the room is transformed into a never-ending train tunnel. There’s no real redemption here, just nostalgia and repetition. Whether T2's pessimism is a product of age and time, or whether it’s Boyle’s attempt at reflecting 21st century Britain is the real question here; a question that, for fear of the answer, we might do better not to dwell upon.
