Filmmaking duo Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar had their breakout hit with last year’s excellent Sing Sing, a prison drama inspired by and partly made through a prison arts program. Train Dreams, their latest collaboration and Bentley’s second as director (they co-write their screenplays and switch off directorial duties) couldn’t be more different from Sing Sing, but is by no means a lesser film. It follows early-twentieth-century lumberjack Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) as he contributes to building bridges for railroads and other such logging jobs, returning home to his wife Gladys (Felicity Jones) and their young daughter between jobs.
Bentley and Edgerton have said in interviews that they each feel personally connected to Denis Johnson’s short story of the same name on which the film is based, and that passion couldn’t be more apparent on the screen. Although the film is essentially just a portrait of Robert’s life, it breathes with the courage of its convictions. Robert is a stand-in for an American dream (no pun intended) which has essentially passed us by. There are circumstances in his life which turn him into an observer throughout it, and both he and the film are keenly perceptive. We observe the surreal beauty of the unvarnished Pacific Northwest landscape around Robert, but also the human cruelty which is beginning to shape the country into what it is today — in the words of George Carlin, a shopping mall.
The emotional core of this visual tone poem is Robert and Gladys’ romance. Robert is a bit of a gig-working drifter before meeting her, and she makes the first move, eventually leading to an idyllic log cabin near a stream. We are so attuned to Robert’s feelings and desires that his home literally feels like home base in the first half of the film, as he’s splitting time between logging and family, eventually starting to plan a different path for himself which would keep him at home as his daughter grows up. Given where this aspect of the film goes, it’s easy to anticipate Train Dreams would have a conventional three-act structure. However, it develops into something much more meaningful and profound. Like his logging buddy Oren (William H. Macy), Robert must face so many questions of life without easy answers, and try to develop a zen-like grace through it all.
Two other helpful characters who leave just as much of an impression as Oren are Ignatius Jack (Nathaniel Arcand) and Claire Thompson (Kerry Condon). Ignatius is a Native American general store clerk who starts as Robert’s good friend and later becomes a desperately needed ally at Robert’s lowest point. Claire is a surveyor who enters the film a little later, but whose outlook on life sums up much of what the film explores. Including these, all of the performances in the film are excellent. Edgerton gives this movie everything he has, and this is definitely the high point to date of an already stunning career. Felicity Jones follows up her brilliant work in last year’s The Brutalist with a calming presence as Gladys, anchoring that home base for Robert and the film. Macy as Oren is just wonderful. He first comes off as a crazy old coot, but he slowly reveals the layers underneath the white beard and battered hat.
As fantastic as so many elements of Train Dreams are (including an alternately haunting and uplifting score by Bryce Dessner and a wonderful original song in the credits performed by Dessner and Nick Cave), what ties it all together are its unrivaled visuals. Director of photography Adolpho Veloso makes this film’s dreams realities and its realities dreams (pun intended). There is a sense of feeling enveloped by this nature which very few films achieve. If you watch Train Dreams on Netflix upon its streaming release, I’d urge you to do so on the biggest screen you have at home. I’m usually not snobbish about this sort of thing, but work like this is too beautiful to waste on a phone or laptop. If you can see it in a theater, all the better. I certainly won’t ever forget my first experience with it. | George Napper
