Train Dreams, 2025.
Directed by Clint Bentley.
Starring Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon, William H. Macy, Clifton Collins Jr., John Patrick Lowrie, Alfred Hsing, Ron Ford, Olive Steverding, Zoe Rose Short, Jennifer Simmons, Cisco Keanu Reyes, and Jerry Dykeman.
SYNOPSIS:
A story about Robert Grainier, a day laborer employed as a logger helping to expand the railways across America. Forced to spend prolonged periods of time away from his wife, Gladys, and their young daughter, Grainier struggles to make sense of his place in a rapidly changing world. As his story unfolds, he experiences great love, unspeakable loss and unique bonds, on a journey that is both distinct and universal.
Nearly every minute of Train Dreams is filled with crushing sadness. It’s not emotionally manipulative or overbearing, but something much more profound, tapping into the micro and macro of its protagonist and the universe.
Anchored by a tremendous Joel Edgerton as an early twentieth-century logger expanding railways named Robert Grainer (with details about his life and state of mind narrated throughout by Will Patton, director Clint Bentley’s film (once again teaming with Sing Sing‘s Greg Kwedar on the screenplay, adapting the novella by Denis Johnson), this is a film that covers an entire life among a critical point of development for America, touching upon the ups and downs of that life and often weaving between them in contemplative fashion set to a moving orchestral score from Bryce Dessner. It’s also bursting with gorgeous photography courtesy of Adolpho Veloso, which is appealing to the eyes but also critical in that it’s necessary to see the beauty of these forests as they are destroyed.
After some montages and narration showing and telling about the rough upbringing of a young Robert, the film settles down when he meets Gladys (Felicity Jones), whom he marries, builds a home with, and starts a family. It may sound rushed when writing about it, but in execution, these performers have an instantly moving chemistry. They see each other and the world and know what quiet, isolated existence they want to eke out.
Robert’s work also sees him away from his family, sometimes for months at a time, which hurts and is a feeling people in the modern world will also relate to, even if they aren’t gone for nearly as long. Several types of fatal accidents can happen on logging jobs (multiple smaller characters pop in, each of them distinct and filling out a larger perspective of America in terms of culture and persona), which gradually begins to fill Robert with a creeping dread that maybe it was meant for him, or that something catastrophic will befall him next.
There is also an ecological angle to Train Dreams in that while chopping down trees and destroying these forests to build railroads and further connect the world, society is playing God and meddling with something that they probably shouldn’t be. William H. Macy is here as a sage-like logger (and one hell of a demolitions expert) who, after seemingly a lifetime of doing this, has realized that it’s not right. Worse, each new generation is becoming more aggressive and enthused about such destruction. His supporting turn is a definitive stand-out in a film rich with poetic musings and quietly devastating performances.
Train Dreams is also about something else that shouldn’t be spoiled, but it can be said that it is haunting and overflowing with survivor’s guilt, torment, and an existentially and emotionally draining pursuit for purpose. Sometimes, that search comes with a heavy amount of false hope and an unbelievable turn of fate that might not be real, no matter how real it feels. This is the rare kind of film where you start begging for a happy ending even if it’s not earned just because the sadness has pierced and burrowed that deep into your soul. Thankfully, as a touching sequence toward the end illustrates, no one is alone in trying to make sense of the universe.
Through it all, Joel Edgerton is masterful at acting through body language. This is powerfully ruminative storytelling on both a human level and the larger canvas of the universe, with laborers connecting and building upon the foundations of the world in the most significant, everlasting ways, for better and worse. Train Dreams is about searching for purpose in life, but it goes beyond that, observing the beauty of the world and its destruction while society keeps advancing yet finding new and quicker ways to destroy. But even when it doesn’t make sense, and even if it’s filled with good and bad, there is always beauty.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
