The exquisite Train Dreams, Clint Bentley’s hypnotic, dreamlike portrait of a common American life at the turn of the 20th century, is a lush evocation of a world and man in transition, anchored by a remarkable Joel Edgerton as a Pacific Northwest logger and railroad worker whose quiet existence comes to reflect both the fragility of human experience and the whole of the human condition. That’s quite an achievement for a modest sleeper clocking in at a trim 96 minutes; in an era of inflated movie run times Train Dreams is the rare picture you wish could go on a little longer.
Adapting Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name, Bentley (Jockey) and creative partner Greg Kwedar (who directed the pair’s superb Sing Sing last year) co-wrote the screenplay, crafting an understated meditation on connection to nature and the possibility of reinvention. That they explore these themes so intimately yet so expansively—this is a deeply personal picture set against the scale of a land in transition—makes their sensory poem movie a true American epic. It’s one of the great, beautiful and brutal stories of loss and change on the American frontier.
The fine Australian actor Edgerton stars as soft-spoken, rough-hewn laborer Robert Grainier, who we meet circa late 1800’s as an Idaho hardscrabble orphan and then as an adult by Edgerton, who says little but expresses multitudes; a narration device (which usually don’t work) by Will Patton observes his world, one of backbreaking labor felling trees and laying railroad track in the Northwest forests, and building bridges in a world of transient journeymen.
Bentley and ace cinematographer Adolpho Veloso visually render the forest as a frequently humbling character, shooting with a lyrical reverence worthy of Terrence Malick. With careful shot selection, their camera carves Granier’s story out of nature’s vastness, depicting a world where boots hanging upon a tree trunk carry deep resonance and men relaxing on a massive stump seem subsumed by elemental enormity. In this world, where mens’ labor is always in conversation with the wild, each tree they topple or mile of track they lay suggests a kinship between human effort and the environment.
But whereas modern-age Malick favors languorous mood over story, Bentley and Kwedar establish their own rhythm, placing their narrative front and center, following Granier as he meets and marries love Gladys (Felicity Jones), a smart, forward-thinking wife and mother to their daughter, Kate (Olive Steverding). For a time, life is romantic bliss, settling down to build a cozy cabin on a river. While Robert is frequently called away, his heart remains at home, and Edgerton and Jones are simply superb at conveying longing tempered by the realities of survival. Just as their life begins to look hopeful and they start planning a future opening a sawmill, the natural world intervenes with heartbreaking pitilessness.
Bentley and Kwedar vividly excavate the lives of America’s forgotten journeyman nomads, wandering job to job, year after year, in untamed and untraveled forest interiors to build America’s first infrastructure. It is here that Robert will witness the murder of a Chinese immigrant worker and friend, an act which lingers. And while the men mostly eschew friendships, a kinship with a grizzled workman named Arn, gives William H. Macy a fine moment of philosophical reflection on the blunt realities of the roving tradesman. In another scene, a chatty evangelist (Paul Schneider) finds himself on the blunt end of frontier justice with swift finality.
Edgerton’s vulnerable performance excavates the interior life of a strong, silent man who tries to ease the loneliness of his most difficult life through love that turns to inconceivable grief. During a bleak chapter, a simple act of kindness from Ignatius Jack (Nathaniel Arcand), a Native American merchant, cuts through his isolation. Later, an effective Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin) arrives at just the right moment, creating a subtle opening.
By the time it sprawls forward to its 1968 conclusion, this story of a life in sum suggests that making sense of such a puzzle and the end is beyond human reach—yet in the final astonishing scenes, Bentley nearly finds a way to resolve this enigma. Perhaps what makes us who we “are” isn’t about how long we have lived, far we have traveled or the sum of all we may have accomplished, and how Granier comes to a final perspective on his existence is simple yet transcendent. This is the rare American movie that manages to be private and vast, rooted in history yet timeless.
Netflix is opening Train Dreams in select theaters for a limited theatrical run beginning November 7 with a streaming premiere to follow on November 21. Make no mistake that this is an essential theatrical experience and deserves to be seen projected on the biggest screen possible. Go.
Highly recommended.
3 1/2 stars
