Trainspotting

“How does the aesthetic quality of ‘Trainspotting’ depict ideological
issues of youth and addiction?”

Trainspotting the film (1996) was directed by Danny Boyle after her wrote to the original writer of trainspotting the novel, Irvine Welsh. The film is branded as ‘social realism’ although many people will disagree with this due to the films surreal aesthetic. Social realism films are considered to consistently be set in realistic locations, this is a path that producer Andrew Macdonald chose not to follow when creating trainspotting.
The most evident scene that contradicts the films label as a social realism film is the “worst toilet in Scotland”. It begins with the voiceover from Ewan McGreggor’s character Renton explaining his situation while the handheld camera movements become slow and dazed.  The colour pallet used is cold and neutral, at this point of the film he is off heroin so these colors are contrasting to the vivid ones that are normally associated with him in their home, this is clearly symbolic of the mental state that drugs put them in. The truly surreal aspect of this scene is where he “physically” climbs inside the toilet to retrieve the lost suppositories, once again highlighting on the extent of the situations that their mental state will put them in when it comes to their addictions.

The framing in this shot of Renton on toilet is very low in comparison to the high, wide angle of the shot in the underwater world, representative of  the ‘high’ they’re so addicted too. The cinematography used in trainspotting visualises the way that youth see drugs through the use of hyper realism,