davidlynch

*Trainspotting (Cambridge Dictionary definition)*: the activity of watching trains and writing down the numbers that each railway engine has. Sounds like a pretty damn boring activity to do, doesn’t it? Well, even if it might sound stupid or banal, I think it’s a fundamental aspect of the story: the boredom that what society considers a ‘normal life’ can bring. Despite the movie title, Mark Renton and his *so-called mates* make a choice. And that choice is not to choose life; more specifically, for them, it is choosing heroin. An honest addiction that gives them a rush like no other, something they can’t live without but also choose not to live without. One thing I really appreciated about this movie is that its goal isn’t to teach you anything. There’s no ‘drugs are bad, don’t do them’ moral, but rather a focus on the most real aspects of addiction: the pleasure it gives and the suffering of withdrawal. Its characters feel extremely realistic too. There are no heroes or villains, just people who feel all sorts of emotions and carry all kinds of flaws. It’s raw because of the scenes it forces you to watch. It’s grotesque, disturbing, funny and visceral. It manages to immerse you in what the characters are feeling without ever trying to justify their choices. Mark himself says at the end of the movie: > ***Mark Renton**: [...] So why did I do it? I could offer a million answers - all false. The truth is that I'm a bad person.*No excuses nor justifications: he did it because he is a bad person, and he has no problem admitting it. He then proceeds to say: > *[...] But, that's gonna change - I'm going to change. This is the last of that sort of thing. Now I'm cleaning up and I'm moving on, going straight and choosing life. I'm looking forward to it already. **I'm gonna be just like you.** The job, the family, the fucking big television. [...] getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.*As soon as I heard his last words, I couldn’t help but think about all the times throughout the movie he promised he was going to get clean, that it was going to be his last hit. So even if now he has the money and got rid of his ‘mates’ once and for all, is he really going to change? What he tells us, does he actually mean it? Maybe he does, and most people would see the ending as optimistic: Mark growing, no longer being an addict, starting again. But something I often hear is that there isn’t really such a thing as ex-addicts. It’s something that stays with you for the rest of your life, and that’s the most awful part. Even knowing that, I don’t believe that Mark will ever use heroin again. He will still be an addict, just with a different kind of addiction. I think he’ll follow his mother’s footsteps and develop a ‘**socially acceptable addiction**’; something like a *job, money, or a big fucking television*. So is it a happy ending? Does the smile on his face in the last shots mean he’s finally free, or is he laughing at society, at us? *Maybe telling us that, in one way or another, we are all addicts.*