'Trainspotting' opening analysis

Trainspotting (1996) is a British black comedy crime drama directed by Danny Boyle.

Trainspotting opens with a fast-paced non-diegetic soundtrack (Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life”). The music is parallel to the scene of two shoplifters (Renton and Spud) sprinting down Princes Street. A Scottish voiceover narrates the opening sequence, stating: ‘choose life, choose a job, choose a career, choose a family, choose a f***ing big television’. The fact that the film opens on Princes Street, a major thoroughfare in central Edinburgh, and that the narration is of a Scottish working-class dialect, suggests that Trainspotting in set in Scotland.

A tracking shot follows the characters down a flight of stairs. Match-on action shows a character rolling over a car bonnet. A point-of-view shot from the perspective of the car driver shows the character regain his feet, uninjured. The opening sequence then briefly pauses and the actor looks directly into the camera lens, which makes the audience feel as if the character is laughing at them. The character’s name “Renton” is displayed across the frame, which suggests that he is the central protagonist of Trainspotting because the actor has top-billing.

A straight cut shows Renton in a different environment smoking a cigarette. A wide shot shows the bare and rundown apartment where the character is consuming drugs, which suggests that Renton is economically depressed (i.e. through unemployment).

As the narrator says the line “choose friends”, the scene wipe cuts to a group of five male characters preparing to play a football game. The scene cuts to “Sick Boy”, who denies tackling a player, “Begbie”, who feels a sense of schadenfreude from tackling another player, “Spud”, who's useless at football ,and “Tommy”, who takes on the whole team by himself. Therefore, this short clip in the opening sequence symbolises the main characters’ personality traits.

The opening sequence cuts back to Renton collapsing in the room where he has been smoking. Therefore, this represents the character as a recreational drug user. Furthermore, the character rhetorically asks: “who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?” This reinforces the image of Renton as a drug user, and suggests that Trainspotting will feature drugs as an essential theme.

In conclusion, the opening portrays a group of young, Scottish heroin addicts in the 1980s. From the fast-paced editing and music, it is suggested that Trainspotting will depict heroin addicts as lacking responsibility and reckless.