They’d been talking about doing a Trainspotting sequel for so long that I just sort of got used to it as background noise- a nice idea but something that would clearly never happen. So when the trailer finally dropped last year and I realised it was happening, I felt a sense of anxiety. Like when one of your mates has a really bad idea and you want to be supportive but deep down you worry they’ll make a right tit of themselves. I mean, we all know sequels are shit. They’re largely cooked up by greedy Hollywood execs, desperate to cash in on the success of the first film. The two rare exceptions to this rule, according to conventional film buff wisdom, are Godfather part 2(banger, better than the first) and Terminator 2(Fair). My sister likes to add Grease 2 to that list but she’s off her head. Speaking of my elder sibling, it was through the prism of her 'teenage cool' that Trainspotting first filtered through into my 9-year-old consciousness back in 1996. As a pre-teen in Major’s Britain, drugs were BAD. Leah Betts died from ONE ecstasy tablet. If anyone asked you if you wanted drugs you were to say NO. If you saw a needle(as you often did in those days) in the park opposite our house you were to IMMEDIATELY go home and tell an adult, not touch it. This last commandment was drilled into me so vehemently that I once got stuck midway down a fireman’s pole on the park climbing frame, shrieking because I’d seen a needle at the bottom, a good two metres away, and refused to carry on sliding down. I couldn’t shimmy back up either so was really fucked. So when Faye was reading a book about drugs I couldn’t bloody believe it. She kept laughing at it too! Imagine! Naturally, one day while she was out, curiosity got the better of me and I had a quick glance at the page she was on. The first word I saw was ‘cunt’ which I’d certainly never heard before but instinctively knew was off the charts in terms of the swear words I already knew. I quickly shut it and didn’t open it again till years later when it, ironically, became one of my favourite books. And while It’s never been one of my favourite films, I think it’s a pretty damn good adaptation that has essentially become a British institution. And given that the average Daily Mail reader in the mid-90s probably had the life experience and emotional intelligence of 9-year-old me, it’s not hard to see why the original film was so subversive and controversial. But those were much simpler times. Is a sequel remotely relevant today? I mean an evil billionaire has essentially taken over the world and we all live in fear of Armaggeden because of an ill-thought out tweet. We’re a pretty jaded bunch. When I went down to the cinema to find out I was surprised to see one of the roughest, rowdiest crowds I’ve seen at a film for a good while! Basically every aging ,former mad head and (quite possibly) skag head from Brighton had decided to indulge in some 90s nostalgia that night. People were pissed, whooping, going out to the toilet like a bunch of fucking kids on a school trip and, I shit you not, DANCING. It was like one of those nights they put on for Rocky Horror Picture show or something. So you’ll have to forgive me if the finer nuances went over my head as I was struggling to fucking concentrate most of the time. Having said that, let me just save you the suspense and say that I really enjoyed it. It was a very, very good film. Despite my apprehensions, about ten minutes in, I breathed a sigh of relief as I realised like ‘yeah, you’ve got this..’ and relaxed to enjoy it. Because of the aforementioned drugs climate of the 90s etc, the first film is often seen, somewhat reductively, as the ‘heroin movie’. But the sequel makes the wise choice, like nearly all of the film’s characters twenty years later, to pretty much eskew heroin. Instead it focuses on the deeper themes of the books; friendship, loyalty, home, belonging etc, all with a hefty dose of nostalgia. This really worked for me as I am ridiculously nostalgic but I can totally appreciate why others might find it slightly heavy handed. Several times when the characters were reminiscing or referencing the first film, a sepia tinted flash back of it would cut in. A couple of times it worked but at others I was like “YEAH I KNOW, I REMEMBER- the reference was enough.” Tough shit if people can’t remember the first film, they shouldn’t be watching the sequel. The childhood shots worked for the most part too, I’d say, but wouldn’t argue with anyone who thought they didn’t. Horses for courses. However, the slowed down, eerie snippets of Born Slippy that were used sparingly really floated my boat. Oof, shivers. Performance wise, everyone really showed up and gave it their fucking all. It was really clear to see that everyone involved had a lot of respect for the original source material, the film that made most of them and the reasons for doing this sequel. No-one had that ‘I got fucking roped into this years ago and am now contractually obliged to phone it in’ air about them. Ewan MacGregor’s updated ‘Choose Life’ monologue felt surprisingly powerful and heartfelt and, most importantly, very relevant. The contrast between the two eras felt stark and unsettling and you could really get and feel Renton’s bewilderment at the change in Edinburgh- something I’m sure plenty of people who avoid their home town can relate to. Johnny Lee Miller’s Sick Boy got, by my calculations, a lot more screen time than he did in the original. And it certainly wasn’t wasted on him as he’s great at playing the a smarmy, sexy, sociopathic scum bag you still root for. Top marks for his ‘your blood runs in my veins, Mark’ scene (to both him and Macgregor).I thought I noticed his Scottish accent slip a couple of times but I’ll let him off because... fuck me. Literally, RADA boy. Ewen Bremner had me in tears a couple of times with his tragic portrayal of Spud who has,not surprisingly, had the worst trajectory of the gang since the first film. And last but certainly not fucking least, Begbie. Robert Carlyle clearly went full 'method' to get back into Francis Begbie’s psyche as he looked fucking terrible and had a seemingly unending level of psychopathic energy. Having said that, I am still unsure how I feel about his story arc and how he was used in the film. Do I believe that a man like Begbie would still want to kill Renton after the events of the first film, twenty years later? Absolutely. But honestly at some points, he seemed a bit Michael Myers about it. The terrifying thing about the Begbie from the first film was his ‘normal-bloke-down- the-pub’ psychopathy, the local nasty. In the update he felt a bit like the villain in a horror film and I’m sure there were more plausible reasons for him to be back in Edinburgh than the far- fetched storyline used. I managed to put those believability issues aside for the scene when they are finally reunited, though. It was just fucking genius. I was laughing while also hiding under my scarf, terrified! It kind of felt like being tickled, when you’re laughing but really not enjoying it. Danny Boyle, Macgregor and Carlyle clearly knew that people had been waiting twenty years for that moment and it was a real fan pay-off. Thanks, guys! Now that’s all well and good but it’s time for a brief intermission for a minor feminist rant. The film adaptation has always been about a group of men. I get that and the two minor female characters from the first film did re-appear, albeit very briefly. But given Gail’s relevance in Spud’s storyline and the fact Diane was a very interesting character in the first, I felt like we could have sacrificed a few of the music video-esque, trailer-baity, filler scenes for more of them. Also, we then have a love triangle with two middle aged, good for nothing, petty criminal ex heroin addicts and a woman who is 21 if a day and beautiful! Nothing against the actress, she certainly gave a good performance and is stunningly gorgeous but come on… The subtext was that Diane, 14 and underage at the time of the first film is now too old for Renton at 34.(Good Will Hunting over here with the maths). And they think that by acknowledging this with a joke from Diane about Veronika being ‘too young’ for Renton, they’ve got away with it! A major theme of the film is the passage of time and the absolute shitter that is getting old but apparently only men are given that level of introspection. Grr, do better. There was also a smattering of slightly duff scenes that I thought didn't work but whoever edited it deserves credit for keeping it just about in check and reasonably well paced. As much as I love Danny Boyle(my hometown hero) I feel like he is so stylistically brilliant in terms of gimicky, surreal effects and music that he can sometimes give in to style over substance. Certainly with the first Trainspotting and The Beach, certain scenes feel more like a trailer for the films rather than the films themselves. If that makes any sense at all. But in this outing, I feel like that was reigned in a bit and I actually enjoyed most of the typical Boyle sequences, particularly the cocaine session between Renton and Sick boy with them both fighting over who got to chose the next nostalgic song, football clip or film scene on the tele, blathering to Veronika about their brilliance. Very realistic. He has a perhaps unparalleled ability to capture a time period; the aesthetics, the feel, the fads and the trends very well. And just as the original feels unmistakably of its time, so does its successor. As a result, they compliment each other well. Twenty years is a long time and a lot has fucking happened. To everyone who has lived through it and to western society. I can remember 1996 pretty well but if I'd been in my 20s then, I can only imagine how hard the nostalgia must hit now. Well, I don't have to imagine actually as I witnessed it first hand when one of the 40 odd year old reprobates I was in the screening with got up to do the dance with Renton to Iggy Pop lust for Life to the closing credits while everyone cheered him on! A British fucking institution, indeed.
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As far back as I can remember I always loved Goodfellas… ha, nah even I’m not that lazy a writer and that is actually not true. I accidentally saw the horrifically violent opening scene at about age seven or eight when my Dad made the ill-advised decision to send me to bed ‘once it started getting nasty’. Yeah that’s in about three seconds, Dad. I think he was busy fumbling about for a VHS tape to record it on in the standard ‘SHIT A GOOD FILM HAS UNEXPECTEDLY COME ON TELE’ 90s way so couldn’t even get it off in time, either. Once that trauma had subsided, I then saw it alone as a teenager of about 15 and thought it was the coolest fucking thing I’d ever sat through. I remember getting really annoyed when the Channel 4 voiceover women had the fucking nerve to speak over the ending credits about what was coming up next as I was still taking it all in. I then spent the next few years making sure everyone knew it was my favourite film regardless of whether they had enquired, finding out what all the 60s/70s soundtrack songs were(no easy feat pre-internet!) and buying giant posters of it from shitty market shops to put up in case anyone didn’t already know that I BUMMED it. But, of course, there are a lot of things that seem cool to you at that age that you eventually realise are pretty naff and drop by the wayside. Including films. I used to think aggressively liking Pulp Fiction made me ,by default, 25-years-old and as cool as Uma Thurman. Now I’m just like 'meh'. And don’t get me started on Fight Club. But with Goodfellas, I am still instantly that try too hard teenager again. You know why?(it was out of respect..) Because it’s fucking cool AND an excellent film. It has well and truly stood the test of time, as I found out when I went to see it at the BFI last week- on the big screen for the first time. I took my mate Claire McAteer who'd never seen it before but knew it was a classic. (I think she might have regretted the decision, initially, when I was flapping about trying to co-ordinate buying wine, picking up our tickets and getting into our seats before it started once I found out there were no trailers). Thankfully, we were comfortably seated ,with large glasses of red, in time for the child-traumatising opening sequence. McAteer was definitely the only person in there who hadn’t seen it before as while me and a bunch of middle aged blokes tried to out ‘knowingly laugh’ each other, Claire flinched, gasped and put her hands up to her face every time someone unexpectedly got ‘whacked’ or an ostensibly funny scene suddenly descended into graphic violence. I knew she was enjoying it though, as the only time she remotely broke concentration was to share a quick ‘phwoar’ nod with me when we first see Ray Liotta as grown up Henry Hill and to agree that I take one for the team and sprint to the bar for more wine after the Billy Batts scene. (I was seconds from shouting “EXCUSE ME EVERYONE I AM BALLS DEEP IN GOODFELLAS” when I wasn’t getting served, instantly. Think most people would have understood and stepped aside..) But I knew it had really resonated when she literally didn’t move from her seat or look away until the last strains of Layla had finished playing out the credits! Even I was like fidgeting with my coat like, ‘ok, that’s Goodfellas then..’. When she’d eventually come out of her trance we re-located to the bar and had Newsnight fucking review for about two hours over how good it was. You might think there's nothing strange about two women chatting about how fantastic Goodfellas is. But apparently SOME men do. A year ago or so, I had the misfortune to see THIS article. It argues that women are not capable of understanding Goodfellas. When I first read it, I actually morphed into Joe Pesci's Tommy, such was the level of anger it set off in me. Aside from the obvious troll sexism, what really pissed me off about it was that HE clearly hadn't fucking understood Goodfellas, his so-called favourite film. He argues that its a 'male fantasy' a la fucking Entourage or 'the brat pack minus tuxedos'. This motherfucking mutt continues that the characters are "exactly what guys want to be: lazy but powerful, deadly but funny, tough, unsentimental and devoted above all to their brothers — a small group of guys who will always have your back. Women sense that they are irrelevant to this fantasy, and it bothers them." (I just had to re-read it to get that quote and am now FUMING again.) Has he ever even watched it all the way through? NONE of them have each other's backs. That is literally the fucking point of the movie; that the mafioso code of honour they all quote with reverence is total bollocks. They're greedy, ruthless and out for themselves and you can't trust them even if they claim to be your friend. I had a better reading of the thing as a FIFTEEN-year-old woman. Another crucial element that seemingly went completely over his head is that these men AREN'T the fucking brat pack. They're 'blue collar guys' *Lorraine Bracco voice* at the bottom rung of organised crime, not even part of a mafia 'family'. The foot soldiers, not the Don Corleones. Of course, as a viewer you can't help but be seduced by Ray Liotta's voiceover selling the lifestyle to you. It indulges everyone's basest desire to be powerful, respected and threatening sometimes. That facet of the human experience is not exclusive to men. It also explores the intoxicating desire to be someone like that's significant other- me and Claire both had to take a moment for Lorraine Bracco's Karen VO-ing "I know there are women, like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I didn't. I got to admit the truth. It turned me on." (Oy Vey) And lest we fucking overlook Lorranine Bracco.. wow. The fact that this relatively unknown actor, in 1990 no less, appeared in a gangster film alongside Robert bloody DeNiro and Joe Pesci and practically stole the show, bears remembering every day. Simpering Dianne Keaton in Godfather she was not. Anyway(sorry, this is starting to sound as coherent Henry's coked up voiceover by the end of the film) most people will admit that sociopathic criminals and the lifestyle they lead can be very seductive and alluring. Yet scratch just a millimetre under the surface and it's as fake as the tacky furniture and clothes their women spend their ill gotten gains on. Goodfellas is cool, sure. But it's gritty, working class New York cool, people who are "somebody in a neighbourhood full of nobodies.." And if you can't appreciate that pretty fucking obvious theme and think the story is supposed to be aspirational, then you're either as morally bankrupt as the characters in the film or the film is as unsuitable for you as it was for me aged seven. Perhaps another reason stupid bro-y Americans such as the author of that bag of shite get caught up in the style rather than the substance of the film is the absolutely BANGING soundtrack. Like with all Scorsese's films, he scores it solely with sourced material from the time, meaning in the earlier scenes you get lots of cheesy, crooner numbers and by its paranoid, frantic last third you get 70s, cocaine guitar rock. But what always takes my breath away is his UNCANNY ability to pair totally unremarkable, sometimes almost twee, songs with an incongruous scene and trigger something really weird in you. For example, what is going on in the Pink Cadillac/dead bodies scene set to Derek and the Dominoes? How do you come up with something like that? Every time I watch that bit, I feel like I've just dropped an e; goosebumps and the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. But I can never really identify what emotion I'm experiencing. I'm not sad that any of them are dead, I'm not happy, I'm just weirdly exhilarated. It's almost kind of uncomfortable. Genius. I swear the man could set a scene to Agadoo and get an Oscar. Goodfellas, and a bunch of other Scorsese films, are out at cinemas again through February- although I think Goodfellas is now only out at the BFI and the ICA for a couple more days. Soz about me and my shit blogging speed. If you can get to a screening, even if you've seen it a million times before, I highly recommend you do. It was the perfect anecdote to the current state of affairs and I didn't think of Donald Trump once. Except for maybe subconsciously while Billy Batts was getting his head kicked in. NB If you've never seen it before, a word of warning, you will be STARVING by the end of it. Food is basically a character in its own right. My mate Bryanna is in a radge because it's not showing anywhere near her in Liverpool and she wants to see it again. So we've decided next I go up for a visit we're going to stick it on the tele and watch it with an Italian fest. She cooks Italian food as well as Paulie does in the can so if you want to follow suit, she recommends these dishes |
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