What is left in between: Trainspotting, from Novel to Film

Abstract

[eng] When comparing a filmic text with the literary source it comes from, the conclusion usually ends up by underlining the excellence and complexity of the written text as opposed to its simplification in the film adaptation. Specialists in the matter note how comparisons between both means of expression tend to focus on questions related to plot and characters. This fact favours an unfair judgement in detriment of the filmic adaptation, as in most occasions it is impossible to include in it every character and episode in the book. Accordingly, theorists propose an analysis of both cultural artefacts attending exclusively to their own idiosyncrasy as texts though, conscious as they are of the impossibility to refrain comparisons, they insist on the necessity of analysing the narrative modes and their transposition from the source text, leaving aside questions related to the contents. The intention in my proposal is to focus on Danny Boyle's adaptation of Irvine Welsh's controversial novel Trainspotting and the implicit 'translation' process in it, paying attention not only to what was left out of the original story -the film could have never been possible if some of the harshest episodes in the written text were to be included in the cinematographic version¿ but also to the discursive articulation of the film.