T2: Trainspotting
Mark Renton returns to an Edinburgh transforming into somewhere unfamiliar as the past is slowly being torn down in the name of Gentrification. As he reunites with sick boy and spud the past begins to creep back and haunts him as he slips back into old habits.
Initially the film threw me a little as it lacked the pace and forward momentum of the first movie. Slowly it dawned on me that the queasy sense of nostalgia for places and people long gone is intentional and the film is drawing me into the head space of the central characters. Certainly as a 37 year old who remembers the film coming out the first time around I felt a strange connection to the film that I suspect 20 year old's who might connect with the original probably would not. As the film gradually became a tale of escaping addiction through creativity it somehow manages to be about the psychological place that Irvine welsh himself must have been in when he initially wrote the book. I was especially pleased they included Trainspotting at leith central station at a place in the film that brought some genuine pathos and humanity to Begbie.
Older geezers like me who have been around a bit will find a lot here in a film where the same creative team are older wiser and probably more talented but the younger audience might need to wait 20 years. The soundtrack is superb and it has some of the best composed shots I've seen in a film for a while.
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