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January 28, 2025What does it mean to live a life? Many films begin at a certain point in the timeline of their main characters, checking in on them for a period of a few years. Others are more comprehensive biographies, starting at the very beginning and sticking with them until the very end. Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams depicts the fictional but deeply resonant and compelling solitary journey of one man who moved through his life going from one job to the next, never truly having the opportunity to take time to appreciate and enjoy what he had and the world around him.
Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) is sent on a train at a young age for unknown reasons with no knowledge of who his birth parents were, and grows up to become a logger, traveling throughout the Pacific Northwest for the latest seasonal work. At one point when he’s not on the job, he meets Gladys (Felicity Jones) and starts a family. Literally building a home together and having a daughter enable him to feel closer to anyone than he ever has, but work soon takes him away again, and events beyond his control shape a future filled with loneliness and a lack of true happiness.
Train Dreams is based on the novella of the same name by Denis Johnson and adapted for the screen by Bentley and Greg Kwedar. The pair, in reversed roles, comes to this project from the Oscar-nominated Sing Sing, and while it’s an extraordinarily different film, their latest collaboration is another resounding success. There’s a simplicity to this story, which follows a man who doesn’t say much and meets handful of characters throughout his life. Edgerton summed up that sentiment best in a Q & A following the film’s Park City, Utah premiere at Sundance, that he often feels like he is moved by the world rather than moves the world by his own will.
Train Dreams boasts dazzling visuals of a region of the United States that has great beauty, even if its protagonist experiences much of that as he works tirelessly and occasionally watches his colleagues killed by falling trees or other unexpected accidents. He stares out the window of the train taking in the grandeur of his surroundings each time he goes back to another job, and though it doesn’t always feel like it, he knows that he’s been a part of building that up so that people can travel from place to place. This is a film about the vastness of the world, even if Grainier never sees all that much of it beyond the same admittedly gorgeous areas over and over again.
Edgerton turns in a contemplative performance that’s much more about Grainier feeding off the people around him than him actively influencing them, particularly in the haunting dreams he has about the Chinese logger who is abruptly thrown off a bridge by hateful men on one of his earlier jobs. Jones, in a small role, is transfixing, and appearances by William H. Macy, Paul Schneider, and Kerry Condon as those who make a distinct impression on Grainier are not easily forgotten.
This film at times feels like a non-fantastical version of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a not-so-curious but still greatly interesting and exceptionally-made story of one rather ordinary man from birth to death. It’s infused with a great deal of humor in Bentley and Kwedar’s script and Will Patton’s narration to break up the grandeur of its more serious, sweeping events, which feels true to life, because even the gravest of stories are littered with funny moments. The cinematography by Adolpho Veloso and music by Bryce Dressner set a nostalgic, sentimental tone for this quiet surprise of a film, a testament to an unrealized American dream and the continued pursuit of happiness.
Movie Rating: 8/10