Anti-Slogan Sloganeering

Rating: 8/10 (3 November 2007)

What today may now be more popularly recognized as the film that launched the career of adolescent Obi-Wan Kenobi to become; was once a touchstone for the neo-punk-rave-hardcore-dance subcultural amalgam of the English-speaking world during the mid 90s. Yet the anti-slogan sloganeering of the film's opening sequence (later reprinted on bedroom and dorm-wall decorative posters, "Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a _______"... (spoken with a Scottish accent) (...inverting the Talking Heads' Once in a Lifetime)) marked yet another moment of self-conscious subversion on behalf of the underground; pre-dating and possibly foreshadowing the release of the UK anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba's single "Tubthumping," a year later. Both the film and the song ironically castigate the excesses of hedonistic drug culture and again, both have similarly been championed by the very people against whom their creators railed.
Post-Pulp Fiction, the cringe/revolting factor seems to have been ratcheted up a few notches; potential viewers should certainly be ready to be disturbed. Where Trainspotting shined, however, was in its delivery of these disturbances. In contrast to other drug films and the setting for many scenes (run down hotel rooms, decrepit squats, and especially "the worst bathroom in Scotland"), Trainspotting presents a polished clean image. The stylized gleam is reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's cult favorite, A Clockwork Orange (1971). Trainspotting's heightened nasty(vomiting)/immaculate(Donald Judd!) dichotomy would later be used (and even elaborated on) in Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (2000). As a result, the film looks great, but unfortunately for its inhabitants, it depicts the human condition in only the bleakest terms. Despite this, Trainspotting, is none the less a skillfully constructed feature with definite entertainment value.