Nostalgia

Nostalgia: the British disease. A longing for a past that never was. A misty look back at sunlit hills, winding lanes and church bells; a pre-industrial, pastoral idyll. Steam trains, cream teas, thatched cottages, picnic baskets, red checked tablecloths...An Ambrosia Devon custard advert. I’m all too guilty of this kind of nostalgia myself - I love a steam train! I also love costume dramas where the characters use cigarette holders and wear vivid red lipstick. It’s an escape, make no mistake.

Bette Davis Beyond the Forest: Wikepedia

We are also nostalgic about our own past and, in a society that fetishisises youth, this is no surprise. The scanning of photos; the obsessive analysis of the unsullied, un-creased skin, the constant reminiscences. A look back at a time when your friends were your family; when you were a tribe, a gang, and together you could take on the world.

I went to see T2 Trainspotting, the other day. I was worried about it. The original film was so good. Would this follow up be an ill-advised nostalgia-fest? A cashing in on a franchise? Would it be like those terrible Jane Austen spin offs - the ones that seemed more like a hollow mockery than a loving homage?

I think they pulled it off, though. T2 Trainspotting addresses the whole nostalgia trap head-on. A younger character berates the middle aged (Mark) RENTON and SIMON (Sick-Boy) for being 'tourists in their own pasts', as they reminisce, watch old video footage and sift through photos. Director Danny Boyle has a overlay of footage from the original Trainspotting film, obtruding onto the present-day experiences of the characters. Present day SPUD hallucinates Renton and Sick-Boy of the past, running past him in Princes Street. The characters, perhaps with the exception of Mark*, are looking a little worse for wear; they are blurry round the edges, less doe-eyed and have less hair. *Even Mark (Ewan McGregor) isn’t all he seems; he looks good but his body is bearing the legacy of the past and of his advancing years. His reworking of the ‘choose life’ speech, which functioned as the heartbeat of the first film, is genius and resonates heavily.

Of course the nostalgia of Trainspotting isn’t the pastoral-idyll type that I opened with; it’s the nostalgia of pumping music and fast-paced, erudite dialogue and the original glamour of the beautiful cast (They don’t look too shabby now; look out for the scene where Mark and Simon have to wear farm sacks as kilts to protect their modesty). The original film was criticised for glamorising drug use (although anyone who saw the death of baby Dawn might refute this). The film’s defenders said that it gave an underclass of people a voice.

What the follow up does is gives a believable portrait of what those characters might be doing now. There isn’t a lot of glamour; one of the prominent, recurrent shots is of a massive rubbish dump which sits beside the estate, but there is heart.

And, like the first film, the enduring impression is curiously life-affirming, if in a more slow-moving, domestic kind of way.

I watched the first Trainspotting film when I was at University; it’s a time I often look back on through a rosy-tinted filter. (I miss my Adidas Gazelles!) But I do realise that it wasn't all clubbing and laughs then and that right here is where it's at (man). (Global politics notwithstanding) You can run into danger if you're always looking back.