Train Dreams is a Luminous, Humanist Story of a Life Led a Century Ago
By Chris Knight
Rating: A-
If Hamnet had not won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, my money and hopes would have been on Train Dreams, an equally lyrical, quietly devastating story, also based on a novel of the same name.
Joel Edgerton stars as Robert Grainier, the quintessence of an uneducated yet deeply intelligent man. Strong and a hard worker, he lives in the American West in the early decades of the 20th century, labouring on crews that fell lumber and build the bridges needed for an expanding network of railways. (It’s really more forest dreams.)
Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier in Train Dreams
Little happens, but also everything happens. Robert meets Gladys (Felicity Jones) and the two get married, have a baby girl, and raise her in a simple cabin that Robert often has to leave behind in order to work.
On the job, he meets men of many different temperaments. William H. Macy is wondrous as Arn Peeples, an explosives expert and natural philosopher, quietly taking in the world around him when not noisily blowing up bits of it.
Peeples’ removal from the story is a blow to the viewer, but so too is the exit of a Chinese labourer in a strange case of almost casual racism that happened so quickly, I’m honestly not sure if Robert took part or merely watched. In any case, the incident follows him through his life like a ghost.
Train Dreams is just the second feature from director Clint Bentley, who also made the excellent 2021 film Jockey, about an ageing rider played by Clifton Collins Jr. who also has a small role in Train Dreams. Bentley also co-wrote the script for 2023’s Sing Sing, another deeply humanist movie, this one about prisoners who find a measure of personal redemption through art.
He has a keen sense of those filmmaking basics: where to put the camera; how long to keep in there. A tense and oddly funny scene finds Robert relaxing in a forest clearing with his coworkers when an itinerant bounty hunter shows up, apparently on the trail of his quarry since 1893. The man is polite, businesslike and ultimately deadly.
Late in the movie — and well into his life — he meets Claire (Kerry Condon), a modern woman working for the forest service, her anachronistic personality a reminder of what an accelerating time period that was. One could have witnessed the Wright brothers’ first flight as a young person, and the launch of Apollo 8 to the moon as an old one.
But while Robert occasionally brushes up against history and progress — including a ride in a biplane, circa 1927 — this is no Forrest Gump or Benjamin Button saga. Train Dreams may be painted on the sprawling physical canvas of the American West, but its themes and plot are constructed of small, simple pieces, emotional swings we’ve all felt to one degree or another.
Edgerton delivers a restrained and understated performance that nevertheless keeps us aware of what’s going on under his skin. He says little, but it’s enough.
Meanwhile, the film, as a whole, made me think of some other great American filmmakers. There were shades of Terrence Malick in its use of nature as a character in its own right, and of Kelly Reichardt in the way it delivers a period piece so alive it feels like you could walk into its world.
But ultimately, Train Dreams is a unique concoction, and a journey worth taking for its own keening moments of grief and simple wisps of joy.
Train Dreams. Directed by Clint Bentley. Starring Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jons, and William H. Macy. Opens Nov. 7 in cinemas, and Nov. 14 on Netflix.