Trainspotting: Synopsis
The synopsis below is intended to help you remember key moments from the film and may help you choose particular scenes to use to emphasis some of the points you may want to make in your essay.
In particular, it may be useful for any question that focuses on narrative - just remember not to simply regurgitate the information below. A question on narrative will never require you to simply re-tell the story - instead, you will be expected to discuss the way events have been structured and the ways that this structuring creates expectations and responses from the spectator.
Use this synopsis as a way of jogging your memory about what happens in the film BUT not as a direct response to a question on narrative.
SYNOPSIS
As stolen items drop from his pockets, Renton's voiceover begins, delivering a monologue that satirizes what modern, Western society considers the 'perfect life'. As the voiceover continues, shots of a five-aside football match introduce his friends and some of their key character traits. We see shots of Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) who is presented as a conman, Spud who seems nervous, non-confrontational and weak, Tommy (Kevin McKidd) who appears to be athletic and Begbie (Robert Carlyle) who is presented as an aggressive psychopath. As each character is shown, a title with their name appears on screen.
As Renton's narration continues, the audience learn that he is addicted to heroin, as are Spud, Sick Boy and Allison (another friend who has a baby). Begbie and Tommy do not touch heroin and try to tell the others to stop using drugs. We see shots of Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Allison taking heroin in a dingy, run-down flat. During the opening scene the audience are also introduced to some more peripheral members of the group including Lizzie (Tommy's girlfriend), Gail (Spud's girlfriend) and Swanney (their drug dealer).
Renton, not for the first time, decides to quit heroin by following a withdrawal method devised by Sick Boy - locking himself in his bedsit with tins of soup, ice cream, milk of magnesium, mouthwash, paracetamol, mineral water, lucozade and pornography. Having had one more hit before going 'cold turkey', Renton buys opium rectal suppositories from a secondary drug dealer, Mikey Forrester to ease the transition while withdrawing. His last hit wears off before the suppositories have time to melt, triggering a violent episode of diarrhea.
In a state of panic, Renton rushes into 'The Worst Toilet in Scotland' and loses his suppositories down the toilet. In the first of a number of surreal scenes, Renton dives into the toilet to recover the lost suppositories (passing an unexploded WWII mine as he swims to retrieve them).
Renton returns to his flat and barricades himself in to endure withdrawal. When he returns to the outside world he attempts to remain clean and begins to socialise with his friends to try and pass the time. He meets with Sick Boy, who has also decided to quit heroin (as Renton believes, in order to emphasise how easy he finds it, whilst Renton struggles), visiting the park and shooting a dog with BB pellets.
A series of scenes show Renton trying to re-integrate himself into 'normal' life, away from heroin: Renton helps Spud calm his nerves before a job interview with the DSS by giving him amphetamines, he visits a pub with the whole gang (where we witness Begbie's violence as he sparks a mass brawl by throwing a pint glass off a balcony into the crowd below) and he steals a homemade porno of Tommy and Liz from Tommy's flat.
Renton, finding that his sex drive has returned, visits a club with his friends where he meets Diane, a young clubber. They leave together and go to Diane's apartment where they have sex.
Renton stays the night on the couch and is horrified the following morning when he discovers that Diane is a fifteen-year-old high school student. He tries to put the incident behind him but Diane threatens to tell the police that they had sex if he doesn't agree to see her again. As Renton and Diane spend the night together, we simultaneously witness Liz freaking out during sex with Tommy when she realises the porno they made together has gone missing and we see a drunken Spud pass out and defecate in Gail's bed, before covering Gail's family in excrement as Gail's mum tries to wrestle the sheets from Spud to clean them in the morning.
Uninspired by the 'normality' of their lives, Renton, Spud and Sick Boy start to use heroin again, stealing goods and cash to support their habit. Liz dumps Tommy because of the missing porno he, too, turns to Renton and heroin to try and ease his pain. The group's drug-induced stupor is sharply interrupted when Allison finds that her young daughter Dawn has died of neglect whilst she was high.
They are all horrified but Sick Boy is hit especially hard as it is implied that he is Dawn's father.
Renton and Spud are caught shoplifting (the event that initiated the chase scene at the start of the film) and are arrested. Spud is given a six-month prison sentence and Renton avoids punishment by agreeing to enter a methadone program to help his withdrawal from heroin. Despite support from his family, Renton struggles and is desperate for another hit, sneaking off to Swanney's to buy heroin. In another surreal scene (where Renton appears to sink into the floor) he almost dies of an overdose. Swanney puts him in a taxi and sends him to hospital.
Once Renton is discharged from hospital, his parents take him home and lock him in his childhood bedroom to force him to go through withdrawal and to ensure they can monitor him. As his withdrawal symptoms become more severe Renton has a series of nightmarish hallucinations: he sees Diane sitting on his bed singing, Allison's dead baby crawling along the ceiling, Spud with chains around his ankles, Tommy looking sick and weak because of his new heroin addiction, Begbie smoking under his duvet and an imagined television game show where the host asks his parents detailed questions about HIV.
When he comes out of withdrawal his parents send him to be tested for HIV. Despite years of sharing needles with fellow addicts, he tests negative (possibly because he often cooked up the heroin for his friends and took the first hit). Renton visits Tommy, who has become addicted to heroin and is HIV-positive. Renton gives him money for a hit, but declines to take heroin himself.
Diane visits Renton to ask if he has been tested and when he tells her that he is negative, she invites herself into his apartment. They have sex again and she convinces Renton to make a change in his life. He moves to London and takes a job as a letting agent with a real-estate company. He begins to enjoy his sober, drug-free life and begins saving money whilst keeping in touch with Diane. Begbie and Sick Boy show up at Renton's apartment unannounced and move in.
Begbie has committed an armed robbery and is on the run from the police, whilst Sick Boy has become a pimp and a drug dealer, claiming he is trying to establish contacts in London. They begin to make Renton's life miserable again and he moves them into an apartment that his company has been unable to rent out. Renton's boss catches them and the three of them travel back to Edinburgh together to attend Tommy's funeral.
Once the deal is completed, they celebrate in a London pub. While Begbie and Sick Boy are away from the table, Renton suggests to Spud that they steal Begbie's and Sick Boy's share of the money and run, but Spud is hesitant. Begbie slashes a man with a broken glass and beats him up for accidentally spilling a beer on him.
When Spud tries to stop Begbie, Begbie accidentally slashes his hand with his knife. Back at the hotel they are staying in, as the others sleep the following morning, Renton quietly takes the money. Spud sees him leave but says nothing to the others. When Begbie wakes up he destroys the hotel room in a violent rage. He is arrested as Spud and Sick Boy flee the scene.
Renton's voiceover, which echoes his 'choose life' monologue from the film's opening scene, indicates that he now plans to live a stable, ordinary life. He walks into the bright sunshine of London, and a new life. He leaves Spud a share of the money he has stolen in a lockbox.
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