By Bill Friedell
While many film fans are tired of sequels that happen long after their predecessor(s), these tend to vary in quality and relevance. T2:Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 2017) takes advantage of its twenty-year gap to create a meaningful look at growing older, nostalgia, facing the past, and moving forward. It was left ambiguous at the end of the predecessor film, Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996), if Mark Renton (played by Ewan McGregor) will truly go the straight and narrow after stealing 16,000 pounds from his associates/friends; Spud (Ewen Bremner) Simon, aka Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), and Begbie (Robert Carlyle) made in a heroin deal. T2 explores the idea of nostalgia through revisiting these characters twenty years later. We see what has changed for the group - and, more importantly, how they didn’t change - and how in, retrospect, the changes didn’t do much to help themselves out of their self-destructive cycles of addictions and poor life choices. But, what’s most impressive was the use of callbacks that aren’t empty but have relevance.
In the opening of T2: Trainspotting, we see current-day Mark Renton running on a treadmill as a montage of images flash to the beat of “Shotgun Mouthwash” by High Contrast, climaxing with Renton falling on the ground in the middle of a busy gym (which we find out later was caused by acute coronary insufficiency) and the music grinds to a halt. Now, if you don’t remember (or haven’t seen) Trainspotting, the movie opens with young punk heroin addict Renton and his friend Spud running away from the police, climaxing with Renton falling on the floor, getting high. Comparing the two scenes, there is a lot going on. One of the motifs in this opening is the callback to the ending shot of Trainspotting; as Renton walks toward the camera, ready to go straight and join society, the camera blurs, effectively blurring the reliability of Renton and calling into question his reliability. However, the way T2: Trainspotting represents this scene is by starting the shot blurred and making it clear. This points us a harsh truth by removing the ambiguity of the original film. Renton did try to go clean and did, but now he will be brought out of his delusion of self-betterment and be forced back on a quest to confront his past.
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But he can’t at first. Renton returns to his old home, he goes through his records, selecting an Iggy Pop soundtrack. But, he finds himself unable to play it. The beginning of “Lust for Life” hardly even starts.
One scene that encapsulates Renton’s view of the past and how it relates to the present is through a direct reference and update on the “choose life” monologue (Trainspotting: left, T2: Trainspotting: right) that opened the original movie. Renton explains to Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova), Sick Boy’s girlfriend and business associate, what “choose life” means. Originally an antidrug slogan, Renton and Sick Boy appropriated it and turned it into a joke. At first it seems silly enough. Even the beginning of “Lust for Life” plays with the lighter hearted parts of the monologue, referencing “designer lingerie, designer shoes” and Facebook and Snapchat posts meant to “spew your bile to people you’ve never met”. But then it gets darker with each new spin Renton puts on it, culminating in him revealing his dissatisfaction with not only the world, but himself. We see Renton in an empty bed, a reference to his upcoming divorce. We see his grief over the loss of his mother mirroring a shot seen when Renton first returns home; it is the exact composition of the shot without her from earlier in the film, except his mother is there and Renton is young, fresh from Trainspotting.
This allows us to feel what Renton was experiencing from his point of view, at least from someone who has seen Trainspotting. The next thirty years he will supposedly have after his surgery seem like a nightmare and existential crisis to him because he sees that the twenty years away from his old life as a heroin addict were just as wasted as the time he spent clean. We get a true glimpse of what he has experienced since we last saw him and get greater context to the scene previous. People who had not seen the first movie would probably identify with Veronika, the new person POV who is listening to a forty-something year old man pour out his misery and regret.
Renton sees no other alternative or direction to go, so he instead leans back to the time and people he felt most alive with, stating, “he can’t think of doing anything better”. A study was conducted on nostalgia at the University of South Hampton defines nostalgia as such: “Nostalgia is about close others (family members, friends, partners), momentous events (birthdays, anniversaries, vacations), and settings (sunsets, lakes). It is a self-relevant emotion (as the self is invariably the central character in the narratives) but also a social emotion (as the self is almost always surrounded by close others). It is also bittersweet, albeit mostly positive. And it is triggered typically by aversive conditions, such as negative affect or loneliness” (Tierney).
One scene that encapsulates Renton’s view of the past and how it relates to the present is through a direct reference and update on the “choose life” monologue (Trainspotting: left, T2: Trainspotting: right) that opened the original movie. Renton explains to Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova), Sick Boy’s girlfriend and business associate, what “choose life” means. Originally an antidrug slogan, Renton and Sick Boy appropriated it and turned it into a joke. At first it seems silly enough. Even the beginning of “Lust for Life” plays with the lighter hearted parts of the monologue, referencing “designer lingerie, designer shoes” and Facebook and Snapchat posts meant to “spew your bile to people you’ve never met”. But then it gets darker with each new spin Renton puts on it, culminating in him revealing his dissatisfaction with not only the world, but himself. We see Renton in an empty bed, a reference to his upcoming divorce. We see his grief over the loss of his mother mirroring a shot seen when Renton first returns home; it is the exact composition of the shot without her from earlier in the film, except his mother is there and Renton is young, fresh from Trainspotting.
This allows us to feel what Renton was experiencing from his point of view, at least from someone who has seen Trainspotting. The next thirty years he will supposedly have after his surgery seem like a nightmare and existential crisis to him because he sees that the twenty years away from his old life as a heroin addict were just as wasted as the time he spent clean. We get a true glimpse of what he has experienced since we last saw him and get greater context to the scene previous. People who had not seen the first movie would probably identify with Veronika, the new person POV who is listening to a forty-something year old man pour out his misery and regret.
Renton sees no other alternative or direction to go, so he instead leans back to the time and people he felt most alive with, stating, “he can’t think of doing anything better”. A study was conducted on nostalgia at the University of South Hampton defines nostalgia as such: “Nostalgia is about close others (family members, friends, partners), momentous events (birthdays, anniversaries, vacations), and settings (sunsets, lakes). It is a self-relevant emotion (as the self is invariably the central character in the narratives) but also a social emotion (as the self is almost always surrounded by close others). It is also bittersweet, albeit mostly positive. And it is triggered typically by aversive conditions, such as negative affect or loneliness” (Tierney).
This idea is bought into a particularly harsh light at a train station out in the green where Renton, Sick Boy, and Spud, were dragged to in the first film by their friend Tommy (clip above). They are there in memoriam to Tommy, who died in the first movie. There’s duality in the nostalgia. There is legitimate joy. But there is a distance that Sick Boy even comments on: “Nostalgia. You’re a tourist to your youth. Just cuz you had a near death experience that left you feeling warm and fuzzy. What other moments will you be visiting?”. It’s his selective memory that seems to be part of Renton’s problem. He wants to remember the good times but has yet to make peace with the not-so-fuzzy parts. Renton got their belated friend Tommy hooked on heroin, who eventually died young because of it.
Throughout the film, it is clear to Renton and the audiences that none of the characters Renton left behind have changed (at least not in too meaningful a way). Spud is still a junkie despite having an ex-lover and child. Begbie may be out of jail (broken out) with a son with good prospects, but is still a raging, foul-mouthed, violent man who couldn’t be more petty and willing to drag his son down the same path he took himself. Simon (Sick Boy) is still getting into trouble with the law, despite getting a partner in crime (Veronika), and has graduated from heroin to cocaine. They are stuck in a cycle. And so is Renton. He has come back and now wishes to participate in Sick Boy’s newest hair-brained scheme. He has nothing better to do with his next thirty years.
 Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor), then (Trainspotting, Danny Boyle, 1996) |  Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor), 20 years later (T2: Trainspotting, Danny Boyle, 2017) |
So, Renton decides to move back into his childhood house and live with his father, who he embraces - a sign of acceptance, literally embracing and making peace with his past (clip above) before going back to his room. He can finally listen to the music and have it feel like it is young, despite being a forty-year old dancing in his childhood room to Iggy Pop. As he leans back, grasping the music, we cut back to young Renton leaning back, taking in the euphoria of whatever he smoked. But instead of falling over, he dances. He “faces the music” of his past and has embraced it. As a New York Times article titled, “What Is Nostalgia Good For? Quite a Bit, Research Shows” written by Tierney. “A quick way to induce nostalgia is through music, which has become a favorite tool of researchers. In an experiment in the Netherlands, Ad J. J. M. Vingerhoets of Tilburg University and colleagues found that listening to songs made people feel not only nostalgic but also warmer physically” (Tierney). He has finally begun to actually mature. He no longer flees from his past but embraces it. Mastering it. The camera then pushes back, like a speeding train, as the credits rol1, symbolizing the moving on the characters.
What sequels from years later forget is that references need to have purpose. It’s easy to get an emotional reaction out of telling the audience to remember what the original did. This movie knows it cannot recapture the glory days of 1996. So, it leans on tackling the past and realizing that Renton needed to return to this structure in order to break these characters, and himself, out of their destructive cycle. The journey of Renton in T2: Trainspotting is the story of a man confronting his past and learning to both embrace it and move forward. Nostalgia can be a source of healing and closure.
Works Cited
T2 Trainspotting. Dir. Danny Boyle. Sony Pictures Entertainment, 2017. DVD.
Trainspotting. Dir. Danny Boyle. Polygram Filmed Entertainment, 1996. DVD.
"Nostalgia Group Members ." Index | University of Southampton. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2018.
Tierney, John. "What Is Nostalgia Good For? Quite a Bit, Research Shows." The New York Times. The New York Times, 08 July 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2018.
What sequels from years later forget is that references need to have purpose. It’s easy to get an emotional reaction out of telling the audience to remember what the original did. This movie knows it cannot recapture the glory days of 1996. So, it leans on tackling the past and realizing that Renton needed to return to this structure in order to break these characters, and himself, out of their destructive cycle. The journey of Renton in T2: Trainspotting is the story of a man confronting his past and learning to both embrace it and move forward. Nostalgia can be a source of healing and closure.
Works Cited
T2 Trainspotting. Dir. Danny Boyle. Sony Pictures Entertainment, 2017. DVD.
Trainspotting. Dir. Danny Boyle. Polygram Filmed Entertainment, 1996. DVD.
"Nostalgia Group Members ." Index | University of Southampton. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2018.
Tierney, John. "What Is Nostalgia Good For? Quite a Bit, Research Shows." The New York Times. The New York Times, 08 July 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2018.
