There’s something special about Scotland.

Several of my favorite bands are from there.

The Delgados.  Teenage Fanclub.  Primal Scream.

And it is this final band which really sums up this film.

The British really have never learned how to make films.

There are two major exceptions:

Chaplin and Hitchcock.

Why would they be exceptions?

Because they made their best films in America.  Hollywood.

It’s ironic.

Because Chaplin and Hitchcock are perhaps the two best.  Ever.

Hitchcock was the better director.  Perhaps the most important ever.

But Chaplin was the bigger genius.  His talent was limitless.

So my insult is not meant to imply that the British can’t make timeless films.

They can.

But perhaps not in Britain.

But this whole British blah blah blah.

This film is going in my new category:  Scotland.

Another of my favorite bands (Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci) is Welsh.

I hope to have that category someday.  Wales.

And last but not least:  Ireland.

Which is not to say I don’t have a fond place in my heart for England.

I do.

Manchester.  Liverpool.  Bristol.  Birmingham.  Newcastle.  I could go on.

But we’re here to talk about Scotland.  And this film.

Trainspotting is, at once, a great film and not a great film.  Simultaneously.

Let me explain.

7/7

Looks like as much of a false-flag synthetic terror…the state attacking its own people as.

9/11

Heroin addicts don’t know what day it is.  Not to mention the “date”.

Heroin addicts don’t know what month it is.  Even the year is a bit fuzzy.

They’re fairly sure that a new century has ticked over.

Ewan McGregor is pretty great here.  In his too-small shirt.  Accidentally shagging a minor.

Oops.

Ewen Bremner is good here.  Especially the job interview.

Beautiful to hear English which begs for subtitles.

Jonny Lee Miller has the best hair.  Like Thom Yorke once upon a time.

Bleach-blond chop.

But McGregor has the utilitarian buzz cut.  The sad skinhead.

Spud on the curb.  Talking up at Diane.

And Sick Boy always prattling on about James Bond movies.  [like me]

Kevin McKidd is classic rifling through his VHS collection.  Desperately.

Kelly Macdonald is a revelation.

But Robert Carlyle is really the only indispensable element of this entire film.

He’s not great.  And yet he’s better than great.

Danny Boyle’s direction is generally daft.

It’s good.  Then it’s great.  Then it sucks.

But I’ll say this:  this is an essential film.

You can’t know rock and roll without knowing this film.

Boyle lifted the DNA of rock (with the help of Irvine Welsh).

The story’s alright.  The direction is passable.

But Robert Carlyle is a goddamned miracle.

He’s not conveying anything sublime.

But he’s conveying Scotland.

To me.

King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut.

Yeah, I know…Edinburgh.

But it’s just as applicable to Glasgow.

I hear it in the music of Primal Scream.

And it shows up in the music of another of my favorites:  Spiritualized.

And I hear it in the ravaging sounds of Nick Cave circa Grinderman.

The Anglophone world.

We Americans speak the weirdest.

Especially in my neck of the woods.  Texas.  The South.

But even New York.  The Northeast.

There’s one more essential element about this film:  Iggy Pop.

From “Lust For Life” to “Nightclubbing”, these tunes are moments of crystalized perfection.

Even Lou Reed is well-represented with “Perfect Day”.

If you wanna understand scumbag rock and roll, see this film.

Because the rockers are alive.

They have shite lives.

They live on nothing.

Unless they get lucky.

But there’s a vitality to their way of life.

See them in their natural habitat 🙂

 

-PD