Johann
02-24-2005, 05:52 PM
Here's an excerpt from Alexander Walker's new book "Icons in the Fire: The Decline and Fall of almost everybody in the British Film Industry 1984-2000"
Kubrick, who saw the film soon after it's release, noted with wry amusement how closely it followed the trajectory of his own film, right down to Renton's last minute "salvation" when, in a retake of his opening manifesto, he declares his new allegiance to the values he spurned. "I'm a bad person, but that's going to change...I'm cleaning up...I'm moving on...I'm going straight and choosing life". Such was the personal velocity of the movie up to then that this turning point wasn't viewed as a sellout but a pitstop. But if the film had a frailty, it was here: there wasn't the slightest irony in this Pauline conversion, the way there was in A Clockwork Orange when another Alex declares himself "cured alright" and enlists a government rent-a-thug to seal the alliance between the individuals' love of violence and the state's espousal of it. Kubrick's film made one think. Danny Boyle's film simply made one puke. Kubrick and I watched Trainspotting together- we both came out feeling that, stirred though we might be, there were more lethal substances on which to OD than a voyeuristic tour of the drugs scene. But for the generation that came to it and returned to it for another and yet another fix of the "extreme" life- making instant stars of McGregor and Robert Carlyle, cast as Begbie, the bar-room psychopath, never happier than in the scrum with a broken beer bottle in his hand- "Trainspotting" was one of those experiences that feel like rites.
Food for thought...
Kubrick, who saw the film soon after it's release, noted with wry amusement how closely it followed the trajectory of his own film, right down to Renton's last minute "salvation" when, in a retake of his opening manifesto, he declares his new allegiance to the values he spurned. "I'm a bad person, but that's going to change...I'm cleaning up...I'm moving on...I'm going straight and choosing life". Such was the personal velocity of the movie up to then that this turning point wasn't viewed as a sellout but a pitstop. But if the film had a frailty, it was here: there wasn't the slightest irony in this Pauline conversion, the way there was in A Clockwork Orange when another Alex declares himself "cured alright" and enlists a government rent-a-thug to seal the alliance between the individuals' love of violence and the state's espousal of it. Kubrick's film made one think. Danny Boyle's film simply made one puke. Kubrick and I watched Trainspotting together- we both came out feeling that, stirred though we might be, there were more lethal substances on which to OD than a voyeuristic tour of the drugs scene. But for the generation that came to it and returned to it for another and yet another fix of the "extreme" life- making instant stars of McGregor and Robert Carlyle, cast as Begbie, the bar-room psychopath, never happier than in the scrum with a broken beer bottle in his hand- "Trainspotting" was one of those experiences that feel like rites.
Food for thought...