trainspotting opening scene

cinematography - tracking shot

• The opening tracking shot of Renton sprinting through Edinburgh’s high street is kinetic and disorienting

• camera sways with him, placing us inside his high.

• adrenaline-laced, not moralising.

cinematography - handheld shaky camera

• The handheld, shaky camera work paired with wide-angle lenses

• evokes documentary realism but it’s heightened

• suggesting that chaos and rebellion are his normality

cinematography - close ups

• Close-ups are fast and often off-centre

• visually reflecting addiction’s imbalance and Renton’s fractured identity.

• the lack of visual symmetry mirrors the instability of his worldview.

mise-en-scene

• Renton’s grubby tracksuit, dead-eyed expression, and heroin-stained flat

• build a mise-en-scène of lived-in decay

• comfort within collapse.

mise-en-scene- football

• The football match juxtaposes energy and camaraderie with aimlessness

• dirty clothes, muddy pitch, rain-soaked grey skies.

• Leisure becomes frustration, not escape.

mise-en-scene- shoplifters

• Shoplifters are framed running past symbols of capitalism (like tourist windows)

• embedding anti-consumerism into the backdrop.

• mise-en-scène quietly mocks “normal” society.

editing- jump cuts

• Fast, rhythmic jump cuts punctuate the montage

• heroine is introduced in fragments: needle → track marks → ecstasy.

• shattered editing mirrors both physical rush and psychological disintegration.

• Freeze frames during character introductions (e.g. Sick Boy aiming a gun) are comic but disturbing

• they parody Guy Ritchie-style bravado, highlighting performative masculinity.

editing- cuts between everyday moments and drug use

• eliminate moral contrast

• no clear boundary is left between routine and addiction.

sound- lust for life iggy pop

• Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” explodes as Renton runs

• it doesn’t condemn addiction; it celebrates the momentum of choosing anarchy

• upbeat track sets a rebellious tone.

sound- r choose life monologue

• voiceover, non-diegetic — sarcastic, rhythmic, performative.

• It reclaims Thatcherite rhetoric and spits it back

• turning a political slogan into irony.

sound- minimal

• the music dominates.

• Reality is drowned out.

• Hedonism becomes the soundscape of survival.

representation-

• Addiction is not shown as tragedy but as resistance

• a rational rejection of capitalist conformity

• Heroin isn’t escape; it’s protest.

representation - working class male reimagined

• not violent thug, but sarcastic anti-hero.

• Renton is intelligent, aware, but directionless

• masculinity as a failed performance.

representation- traditional British identity

• Traditional British identity is dismantled

• the football match is chaotic, the street life anarchic

• There’s no glory, no unity — just entropy.

contextual links-

• reflects the fallout of post-Thatcher Britain

• decaying urban spaces, broken youth, and a complete loss of social cohesion

• Renton’s world is what’s left when neoliberalism guts welfare and meaning

contextual factors- 1980s-90s consumerism

• The “Choose Life” speech weaponises the language of 1980s/90s consumerism

• mortgages, cars, washing machines

• and reveals its emptiness.

• generation with nothing to aspire to.

representation- running from society

• Trainspotting opens with a literal and metaphorical run from society

• the opening sprint is not just away from police, but from a future already rejected.

postmodernism- voiceover

• The voiceover destabilises truth

• Renton speaks in contradictions

• It resists fixed meaning

• typical of postmodern cinema where identity and truth are both fluid.

theoretical connections- Marxist film theory

• Renton’s monologue is a rejection of consumerist ideology.

• He actively mocks the false consciousness that tells us to “Choose a job. Choose a career.”

Theoretical connections- postmodernism

• Renton lives in a hyperreal space

• heroin feels more authentic than the artificiality of consumer capitalism.

• His rebellion is simulated, not revolutionary.

Theoretical connections- spectatorship theory

• Theory subverted: no clear equilibrium at the start.

• opens in the middle of disruption — Renton is fleeing the consequences of his lifestyle.

• This deliberate disruption of narrative norms reflects a postmodern structure, where equilibrium is irrelevant or permanently lost