I have a fascination with the unlikable protagonist. By this, I don’t mean the “antihero,” because I feel that their striving and emotional arc are still close enough to being heroic as to be worthy of being compared to one. However, when the main character is so far off that spectrum, when their personalities are irredeemable in any way and yet you still care about what happens to them, I find myself spellbound. Of course, usually these characters work because they’re surrounded by others that are equally reprehensible, so we cling to our protagonist just to get through. I’ve always thought of Trainspotting as being like this; it’s a movie I love to watch, and I love everything about it… except the actual people who populate it.

I bring all of this up to introduce today’s meme, “Favorite Final Line,” because it’s in that final line in Trainspotting that we’re smacked in the face with just what we’ve invested in for the past ninety minutes. We’ve backed the best horse in the picture, there’s no doubt about that, but when the morally corrupt Renton walks off, smiling broadly, and in voice-over says: “The truth is that I’m a bad person,” there’s a feeling not of betrayal or disappointment, but of relief. We’re relieved that we don’t have to hope for the best for him, and we don’t have to worry about him being victimized or carried away by his demons. Whether or not he’s in the middle of  a vicious cycle of addiction to sobriety and back again, he’s a bad person, and that sort is always going to be fine. I’m cheating a bit with this final “line” thing, as it’s really a speech, but it’s that first line of it that packs the punch.

The truth is that I’m a bad person. But, that’s gonna change – I’m going to change. This is the last of that sort of thing. Now I’m cleaning up and I’m moving on, going straight and choosing life. I’m looking forward to it already. I’m gonna be just like you. The job, the family, the fucking big television. The washing machine, the car, the compact disc and electric tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure wear, luggage, three piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.

Because we’re all going to be fine, we know it. The song “Jane Says” expresses this beautifully in the repetition of “I’m gonna kick tomorrow… I’m gonna start tomorrow…” We, all of us, are going to be better, healthier, skinnier, wealthier, happier in our jobs, closer to our families, more generous in our charity, and kinder to small animals… tomorrow. It’s the first day of the new, improved us. No one plans on being fucked-up, and everyone is always sure nothing bad is going to last. There’s a reason that director Danny Boyle has Renton smiling into the camera for that whole speech; he can see us out there in the dark, thinking we’ve just sat through something so far removed from our experience as to be comfortingly foreign. But we’re just like Renton, and what he’s going to do now is start looking and acting just like us.

It’s why I think we care about what happens to Renton though we don’t really like him; we recognize ourselves in the choices he makes. Regardless of how at fault he is or what shocking things he does, something in us is satisfied by his getting away with all of it. We all want to. We’ll be better people tomorrow.