"Trainspotting," Danny Boyle, Film Review

"Trainspotting," Danny Boyle, Film Review

In Trainspotting there is another collision between the strong vision of an author and the strong but different vision of a director, similar to my comments on Fight Club, but more so here with director Danny "I'm a fucking auteur, mate" Boyle.

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A good example of this is the suppository retrieval scene, which in Irvine Welsh's novel is a typical example of his shock-jock "what's the most disgusting scene I can imagine" style.  And it does its job.  It is disgusting and funny and it perfectly illustrates the desperate lengths junkies will go to with their addictions.  Danny Boyle takes it further with the scene of Renton crawling into the filthy toilet and then swimming through clear waters to find the lost suppositories.  It's a classier image than Welsh's and it links to a number of other cinematographic magic realism-like sequences that Boyle adds.  Who knows what they mean, exactly, but they feel in line with the hallucinatory, otherworldly nature of hard drugs.  But it's a different vision, stacked on top of Welsh's original, and the overall effect on the film is that it's Boyle's vision rather than Welsh's that predominates.

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"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

Another thing the film adds to the novel is the fantastic actorly presence of the five main characters: Renton, Sick Boy, Tommy, Spud and Begbie.  Each one is recognizable from his clothes, posture and speech and each actor turns in a great performance (unlike Harry Potter – see my review here). 

Boyle also adds some great location shots of run-down Glasgow flats and awful community pubs.

Other than that, as with Fight Club, the strengths and weaknesses of the film are largely the strengths and weaknesses of the novel.

There is a casual sadism towards women.  One gets randomly glassed by Begbie, another loses her baby, others get put on the game by Sick Boy as he implausibly expands his interests from film criticism to pimping.  The schoolgirl lover of Renton quickly becomes a kind of superhero character in her preposterous old fashioned school uniform.

Perhaps my biggest issue with the book and film is that despite their attempts to present a feisty Scottish working class, the whole thing reeks of the middle classes.

True, when Tommy takes the crew for a hike in the beautiful Scottish mountains – a classic middle-class jaunt – they refuse to move.

True, when the middle-class Edinburgh Festival takes place, the only impact on their lives is a rich American who wanders into their pub, who they beat and rob in a most unfair way, according to middle-class ideology.

True, they complain that their Scottish identify has been compromised by allowing themselves to be ruled by effete English wankers – a perfect example of which is seen when they are happy to take a poor price for a load of heroin from a well-spoken London dealer.

But, Renton's efforts to come off heroin and to save his salary in his brief London job are pure middle-class.

So are Sick Boy's ridiculous speeches about film criticism – surely he'd enjoy a little trip to the Festival.

And Renton gives his address to his one-off girlfriend and eagerly reads her letters in London.  It's hard to imagine a more effete, more middle-class drippy student way of behaving than this.

Overall, Trainspotting is a book with a message, a message that is undermined by Welsh's latent middle-class values (he jokingly claims to be more upper class than middle class).  The film takes on the book and adds the separate artistic vision of Boyle.  It's an entertaining combination.

Personal Score: 6/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

"Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," Guy Ritchie, Film Review

"Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," Guy Ritchie, Film Review

Lock, Stock was a tough film to score.  The first time I watched it I chickened out of scoring it so now I've had to watch it again.  It's undeniably entertaining, a lot of effort has gone into it, it has memorable characters, and it's occasionally funny.  An 8/10 generally means that I would definitely want to watch it again.  I'm not sure that's true here – so the top mark it could get would be 7/10.  But then it's got some really awful dialogue, which takes it down to say a 5/10 and it has Sting playing a bar owner, which loses it another mark to give 4/10.  So… it seems a little harsh, 4/10, but I'm struggling to give it any more.  Perhaps if you hate Sting less than I do, you'd give it a 5/10.

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Lock, Stock has not one, not two or three, but four likeable everyman leads.  Their grim charm is a big part of the film's success.  And then there are a bunch of villains, who all have their memorable traits.  The two non-actors, Sting and Vinnie Jones have clearly been heavily directed, with lighting and camera angles standing in for their (excusable) total lack of acting ability.

So what about the dialogue?  Someone's gone to quite a bit of effort with the dialogue.  There are attempts at different registers, notably with the public schoolboy dope growers, who say things like 'I believe they are in deadly earnest.'  Then there are the two hapless Scousers, who give as good as they get to the southerners and stick up for each other in an endearing way.  They come out with some true Scouse lines at times such as 'you fucking shithouse' and 'going to rob some guns'.  Then there are passages of slang so heavy they are subtitled for comic effect.  So what's not to like?  The problem is with the heroes' and the villains' dialogue.  No matter how rough the character, every line they say is perfectly, logically formed.  Even well educated people in real life don't speak like that.  Hearing it coming from these lowlifes is simply ridiculous and it negates whatever positive impact might have come from careful use of slang etc.

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Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.

      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

It’s all quite nicely stitched together.  For example, we see Nick the Greek  being given a horrible novelty phone at the beginning, and towards the end there he is, using it, complete with its novelty ringtone.

The pathetic posh boys running the drug growing enterprise provide quite a few laughs.  'What are you doing?' says the local geezer who's betrayed them – as one of the lads faints with fear in his arms.

There are hardly any women in the film.  It's very much a blokey enterprise.  I suppose it's better than having a few dolly-birds thrown in, which is what the many rip-offs of Lock, Stock generally do.

'It's been emotional,' says Vinnie at the end, in a desperate attempt to articulate his response to the whole affair.  Well, some stuff certainly happened.  Not sure what the point of it all was, though.

Personal Score: 4/10

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This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

"Shadow of a Doubt," Alfred Hitchcock, Film Review

"Shadow of a Doubt," Alfred Hitchcock, Film Review

Alfred Hitchcock has a fun cameo in Shadow of a Doubt, as a card playing traveller on the train taking Uncle Charlie to Santa Rose.  He has just been dealt a straight flush of spades, which the camera shows us spread out in all their glory.  And if in film and novel writing plot is the king, dialogue is the queen and the characters are the knaves, Hitchcock holds all the cards.

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Shadow of a Doubt is an interesting film primarily because it presents a murderer as the hero.  There is no doubt when we see Joseph Cotten's Uncle Charlie leaving his city boarding house perfectly dressed in a smart suit that we are looking at a Hitchcock hero.  He then effortlessly outwits some bad guys waiting for him.  Later, he pokes fun at the stuffy bank where Teresa Wright's Young Charlie father works.  He breaks the father's superstitious rule of not putting his hat on the bed with a cheeky smile.  The film is begging us to root for this character.

Yet we also find out early on that Uncle Charlie is not what he seems and then that he is a killer – the Merry Widow Murderer.  And there are clear links to Teresa Wright's character, who had been named after him.  Uncle Charlie's poking fun at the stuffy bank is later echoed when Young Charlie arrives at the library a minute after closing time and has to get past the dragon librarian, for example.

Review continues below...

Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.

      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

Uncle Charlie lectures Young Charlie that she knows nothing of the big bad world outside of her small town – and at the beginning of the film we see her lying listlessly on her bed, bored to death with small town life.

Of course, the film can't quite celebrate Uncle Charlie's murderous path through life, despite these efforts to make him a likeable and charming character.

Young Charlie's father and his friend are continually swapping stories about how to perform the perfect murder on each other, in a continual act of escapism through whodunit novels from their humdrum life.  Be careful of what you wish for…  Uncle Charlie then performs two dastardly attempts on Young Charlie's life in stunts that could have come straight out of one of her father's whodunit novels.

'The world's a hell – wake up,' says Uncle Charlie, and the film seems less interested in showing small town American values triumphing over evil than in demonstrating just how asleep everyone is.

Personal Score: 8/10

Follow @MichaelHardach



This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

"Fight Club," David Fincher, Film Review

"Fight Club," David Fincher, Film Review

Who would win an actual fight between Helena Bonham Carter and Brad Pitt?  It's a theoretical question that I'd love to see put to experiment.  Despite Pitt's "Sun's Out, Guns Out" gym bod, I wouldn't bet against Bonham Carter.  She was on fire at this time, desperate to prove that she could do more than the corset-cutie roles that made her name, following on from her Oscar success in The Wings of the Dove, and well before her affluent pantomime act of recent years.

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Regardless of David Fincher's flashy direction, the strengths and weaknesses of Fight Club the film are the same as the strengths and weaknesses of Chuck Palahniuk's novel.  He may be a shock jock at times but Palahniuk is a decent writer with good artistic judgement.  It's the ideas of this novel and film that stay in the memory – finding solace through fake self-help groups, stealing washing from laundrettes to sell, making soap from human fat, proving yourself with chemical burns, pulverizing a pretty rival (to his own imaginary friend).

Review continues below...

Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.

      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison

"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson

"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

The scene where Ed Norton beats himself up to get sacked has strong parallels with the sacking-with-benefits scene in American Beauty, and both scenes are ridiculously improbable (as I mentioned in my review of American Beauty here) – you don't beat The Man that easily.  No way.  But at least Palahniuk links his sacking nicely with the overall fighting theme of the story.  The two films can be viewed as a pair, both showing middle class characters applying their well-educated brains to escaping the ideological constructs that gave them the ability to think outside of the box in the first place.

Middle class self-loathing seeps from Fight Club.  Only the physical pain and violence of fighting (something that professional office workers would ordinarily do anything to avoid) can free these men from their bondage.

When Edward Norton's character meets Tyler Durden on the plane and makes his 'single serving friend' gag, and Tyler says 'Oh yes, I understand, it's very clever.  How's it working out for you, being clever?' he could be talking about the whole book, he could be talking about Palahniuk.

What a great name Tyler Durden is.  Along with the soap logo and the 'first rule of fight club is…', Tyler Durden has got into the public consciousness.  This is a film with influence.

Both Bonham Carter and Pitt seem slightly miscast, but being the pros that they are, they make the best of it.  Many people think that E. M. Forster's Lucy from A Room with a View, Bonham Carter's breakout role, was a boy with a girl's name.  And I've got to say that I've never been convinced by Palahniuk's women characters either.  Marla is more of an idea than a human being, I think.  But in a film where you're never quite sure what is real, it doesn't matter that much.

The least convincing parts of both the novel and the film are when the swarms of working class recruits form a kind of fascist army.  Just because Palahniuk did a few crap jobs and gobbed in some soup doesn't mean he can speak for or understand the poor bastards who do that for their whole lives.

There's a real bravura running through the film.  It's bold, flashy and fun.  David Fincher did his job well and made the film the book deserved.

Personal Score: 6/10

Follow @MichaelHardach



This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.