Review of T2 Trainspotting (2017) by Spangle — 10 Aug 2017

It has been a fair while since I watched Danny Boyle's Trainspotting, but T2 Trainspotting is nonetheless a welcomed return to Edinburgh, where we find our protagonists from the first film. While possessing the same characters and much of the same spirit as its predecessor, the film rarely feels like it is anything but a sequel. It is the kind of film that reminisces on the events of the previous film - a lot of which is brought on naturally with the characters having not seen one another for 20 years either - and never really takes the time to establish its own memories. It is so caught in the past, it forgets to establish the present, opting instead to spend the whole rehashing old plot points and then just winding up ending the same exact way essentially. It is the kind of sequel that, as it goes along, it just sort of winks at the audience and asks, "You remember that part of the first movie?" While still a largely positive experience, Boyle and his sequel never really live up to the original nor does it ever establish why this was necessary.

As with the original, T2 Trainspotting continues to feel like a perfect match between material and director. Focusing on this group of junkies and where they are 20 years later, the film shows some dabbling in drugs and some general re-focusing of their addiction on something positive. Yet, the jump cuts, the "hip-hop" cuts, and constant musical feeling to the film is right up Boyle's alley. His jarring and uncomfortable method of shooting films always leaves his work feeling wholly original and an experience that can only come when watching a Boyle film. After seeing Steve Jobs be largely devoid of Boyle's voice in favor of Aaron Sorkin's, it is a welcome return to "Boyle the auteur" instead of "Boyle the hired gun". While Steve Jobs is a better film, it could have been directed by any number of capable talents. As it stands, T2 Trainspotting is a film that could have only come from Boyle. Jumping from scene-to-scene rapidly, infusing 1970s/1980s rock music, and constantly "flickering" light due to trains passing outside, T2 Trainspotting is a kinetic and frantic film at all turns due to who is sitting in the director's chair.

In the course of the film, the greatest achievement by T2 Trainspotting is its portrayal of addiction over time. Obviously, when they were young, they were focused on getting high. Now, in their 40s, these men look back at themselves and wonder why. Some are still addicted to heroin, some do cocaine, another was in jail, and the other is free of drugs. Through deaths of children, impotency, missed chances at fatherhood, and divorce, these four men are still lost and trying to find themselves, having wasted their youth on drugs and still wasting their lives on drugs and crime. Yet, they are not just lost causes or losers who cannot help themselves; they are addicts. As Mark (Ewan McGregor) so astutely puts it, they are all addicts but they need to find something else to be addicted to. For all of them, they continue to be lost and stab one another in the back because they fall into the same habits, refuse to grow up, and continue to get lost in their addiction once they get back into their old way of life.

However, while the film can compel in that fashion, it also cannot help but repel and make the audience wonder why they bothered. It is not a bad film as I said. Boyle and the smart commentary on addiction over time more than make it worth a watch, but it is a film that feels more obsessed with showing clips from Trainspotting than actually telling a story. Hell, Spud (Ewen Bremner) even writes a serious of stories about their time 20 years ago that the characters sit around and reminisce about. Boyle cannot help but cut to scenes from the original, highlighting for the audience just how similar everything is and how they go through the same beats. Thematically, it obviously shows how nothing has really changed and these are the same people prone to the same mistakes. In other words, one never heals from addiction, they just find news ways to cope with it. However, cinematically, it rarely works. Instead, the film feels more concerned with reminding audiences of what happened, referencing itself, and then just cutting to the chase and showing clips of the original. It is the kind of self-referential style that comedy sequels often take and are criticized for, yet T2 Trainspotting seems to have gotten off scot-free on this issue. While it does not ruin the film and the overall picture comes out alright in the end, it does make it a sequel that feels too much like a re-hash and re-envisioning of the original instead of a strong and worthy continuation of the stories of its characters.