Rewind, Rethink: A Movie Podcast
Aug 19, 2026 · 28 min · 11 segments
Thirty years on, we watch *Trainspotting* , and Alice and Saj ask what gets lost when a film about addiction, and poverty becomes shorthand for "cool nihilism?" Renton's "choose life" monologue plays…
Alice, what's transporting about?
Oh, gosh.
Well...
All right, I'll give you two answers to that one.
This film is about a working class semi-intellectual Scotsman who is trying to get clean and then not get clean and then get clean again from heroin and try to find his place in the world on his own terms.
That's kind of basically what it's about.
From a deeper level, it is about working class.
It's about masculinity.
So it's about classism.
It's about friendship, addiction, not just drugs, addiction on different levels, nihilism, and the idea of escaping your circumstances or escaping yourself.
So when did you first see this film?
I think I would have been a teenager when I saw this.
I think it was probably early 2000s.
Yeah, same, for sure.
I wouldn't have seen it as a kid, but I definitely, it was one of those early films.
I like this type of film.
It's one of those films when you're a teenager where you really start, your brain's really developing in a way where you're like appreciating films and seeing these worlds that you would have no idea about otherwise.
And it's just like this little, Yeah, escape into this world that you get to learn about and you're like, what is heroin? I don't think I knew what heroin was before this film and like injections and stuff like that.
Like it's crazy.
Yeah.
So yes.
I
think...
So I think this was...
Interesting because in terms of drug use, this and probably Rayquan for a Dream are the two films that really stand out to me that just go quite graphic into this is what could happen when you take drugs.
Alice, what's transporting about?
Oh, gosh.
Well...
All right, I'll give you two answers to that one.
This film is about a working class semi-intellectual Scotsman who is trying to get clean and then not get clean and then get clean again from heroin and try to find his place in the world on his own terms.
That's kind of basically what it's about.
From a deeper level, it is about working class.
It's about masculinity.
So it's about classism.
It's about friendship, addiction, not just drugs, addiction on different levels, nihilism, and the idea of escaping your circumstances or escaping yourself.
So when did you first see this film?
I think I would have been a teenager when I saw this.
I think it was probably early 2000s.
Yeah, same, for sure.
I wouldn't have seen it as a kid, but I definitely, it was one of those early films.
I like this type of film.
It's one of those films when you're a teenager where you really start, your brain's really developing in a way where you're like appreciating films and seeing these worlds that you would have no idea about otherwise.
And it's just like this little, Yeah, escape into this world that you get to learn about and you're like, what is heroin? I don't think I knew what heroin was before this film and like injections and stuff like that.
Like it's crazy.
Yeah.
So yes.
I
think...
So I think this was...
Interesting because in terms of drug use, this and probably Rayquan for a Dream are the two films that really stand out to me that just go quite graphic into this is what could happen when you take drugs.
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