“Choose life”
Welcome to Harbour Highlights, a series of cult and classic films, handpicked by the staff of Harbour Lights. This month, in the build-up to Danny Boyle’s return to cinemas with 28 Years Later, staff member Finn takes us back to his break-out hit, Trainspotting.
With his debut film Shallow Grave released in early 1995 to much buzz, Boyle his team of producer Andrew Macdonald and writer John Hodge were already moving onto their next project – an adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s cult novel Trainspotting. Welsh had been worried that any film adaptation of his story of heroin addicts would be a serious social drama for the arthouse crowd. Instead, Boyle and co. brought the dark comedy of Welsh’s novel to the fore, bolstered by an incredible soundtrack and brought to life by a cast including Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle and Johnny Lee Miller, actors who made the characters of Renton, Begbie and Sick Boy into icons.
Released in February 1996 with an unforgettable marketing campaign of black and white portraits emboldened by splashes of bright orange, the film and everything associated with it – the soundtrack, the poster, the cast - became the epitome of British cool. Nearly thirty years later, its lost none of its lust for life, especially when seen on the big screen.
