Friday, 20 March 2020

Trainspotting: Opening

The beginning of the film throws the audience into an action packed scene later on in the film making the narrative non-linear as someone begins to narrate as a close up of a character presents to the audience that he is the main character as we are aligned with him due to seeing him and hearing his voice first and the character . Renton's narration seems to be a somewhat satirical look on life as he lists off things like"choose life, choose a job and choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments" as it seems that Renton is criticising the way society wants us to live and the audience knows that Renton is the main character as we have a freeze frame with his name making it obvious to the audience that he is the main character after aligning us with Renton. during his narration he says "choose your friends" and it cuts to a shot showing all of the other characters and Renton's friends having a football match however this scene can be somewhat seen as foreshadowing to the ending scene where he betrays them as he no longer wants to be dragged down by them anymore. The clips we see of the characters their personality is quickly shown and the audience gets a good idea what they are like for example the next character we see is Sick Boy who is shown to be a sly character as he trips an opponent and pretends that he didn't do it, the next character shown is Begbie who is shown to be an aggressive character as he slide tackles someone without caring and laughing, the next character shown is Spud who we see is shown as the unreliable and dumb character as he fails to catch the ball and the freeze frame is at a point where his facial expression reinforces this, the final character we are shown is Tommy and when we see him Renton talks about "rotting away at the end of it all" which is foreshadowing Tommy's death later on in the film  and we see him get surrounded which could be foreshadowing the way he dies from aids and how he is surrounded by death and no one can help him.

after this we see two scenes spliced together as Renton falls to the ground in both scenes and they cut between the two scenes as he rejects life and we find out that he does heroin and there is no reason why he is like this he just because he wants to which is a breath of fresh air for films as a character which is takes drugs like heroin would have a tragic backstory and have an explanation for why he does this Renton narrates and says he has no reason why he just wanted to do it. The younger audience would enjoy this film as in the media drugs are always demonised and are overexaggerated to be shown as instantly life destroying but the film shows drugs in a realistic way as it shows the effects of drugs but doesn't romanticise it either for example Tommy's death shows the dark reality of drugs and his death was caused from using used needles and contracting the HIV virus and the baby being killed due to neglect.

'The Worst Toilet in Scotland' scene
The beginning of the scene shows Renton picking up suppositories from a drug dealer and the atmosphere within the scene somewhat shows the dark realities of drugs as the room is dirty and bare except for the mattress however the colours present in this room makes the scene less grim as the bright colours of yellow and green which is present and this is also shown in the next scene where Renton walks along the flats at the bottom of the scene and more focus is put into the flats as the set of bland flats has been changed to have various colours to make this scene more vibrant as each set of curtains are bright colours.

When Renton enters the bar the camera switches from close ups of Renton's face and a POV shot of people staring at him until he enters 'The Worst Toilet in Scotland' and this shows up in text to create a comedic tone before we are shown the ghastly state of the toilet as its entirely covered in dirt and faeces with non diegetic sounds of flies reinforces the state of the scene. Renton uses the toilet to defecate and loses the suppositories which he used in the beginning of the scene and begins to look in the toilet which is blocked and is filled with dirty water and as this occurs Renton begins to go inside the toilet and is dragged away from a dark reality for a surrealist scene where he is swimming in a sea and finds the suppositories and goes back up to the surface to climb out of the toilet and this is done to give the audience a break from the harsh reality which is thoroughly present through the film and these surrealist scenes occur during the darkest scenes in the film.
   
Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=trainspotting

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