morrisseyed

[some of these video clips may bother some of you.  look out, and mea culpa if you got to it before i got to post this little preface.]

i grew up in the nineties. there are three movies i distinctly remember going to the cinema to watch in that decade. all affected me in one way or another. not one of them was produced by george lucas.

the first movie was Pulp Fiction. I didn’t know what I was going to see, but I was nonetheless happy to have watched what I did. Tarantino definitely was on his game in the nineties. i also discovered how awesome asynchronous narrative arcs (or something like that) could be.

another movie i remember going to see was The Big Lebowski. My friends still call me the Dude thanks to this film. Thanks, Jeff Bridges, I appreciate that. the dude abides.

the movie that affected me the most, though (or at least the movie that affected me the most tonight) was Trainspotting. Not that I was ever on a road to mainline smack, but I’m pretty sure Will, Brian and I are clean to this day thanks to Irvine Welsh’s story of Mark Renton’s car-wreck of a life.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDLc5xx1ADw&feature=related

i don’t feel the sickness yet, but it’s in the post, that’s for sure.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYmYa8m74Ro&feature=related

if there is one part of the movie that can take the sting off its punch to the stomach, however, it’s found in this scene, when renton is at the lowest of his low moments. while mark’s body and psyche is tearing itself apart, he’s visited by an image of Diane singing New Order’s “Temptation” (around 1:00). Things with Diane never were right – things with Diane could never have been right – so the image of her saying “oh you’ve got green eyes, oh you’ve got blue eyes” eats at him as much as the dead baby, begbie, spud or sick boy does. still, she’s the closest thing to clean and pure he’s got.

that’s the funny thing about heroin and other drugs: an addict must come clean of a substance that is most addictive in its purest form. i’ll sort out the mixed metaphors some other day.

if i could, though, i’d like to end by juxtaposing all of this with Victoria Bergsman’s film for “Temptation.” it reminds us that what we have on our hands here, what is being sung in the middle of Renton’s ugly come-down, is one of the most beautiful love-songs that pop culture has given us in the last thirty years. yes.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xezmxnScGS4