Train Dreams
A movie like “Train Dreams” is one that I feel connected to. There’s a desire to get to the quiet wonder of life that I love in certain films. Thinking back on “A Hidden Life,” “The Bikeriders,” and “Stalker,” they observe humanity simply trying to exist more than they present a narratively complex work. The themes are where they derive their complexity from, and the characters. Here, co-writer/director Clint Bentley is working from a novella by Denis Johnson, but what we see on screen is a purely cinematic experience, and a rewarding one.
Joel Edgerton is, arguably, best known by the masses as Uncle Owen from the “Star Wars” prequels and “Obi-Wan Kenobi” series, but he’s built a career of playing an array of various characters, most notably one half of an interracial couple at the heart of history in “Loving,” and a mixed martial artist dealing with family ghosts in “Warrior.” Robert Grainier is another rich character for the actor. A man who works as a lumberjack and train track worker in the early 20th Century, Grainier is taciturn and seems to observe man more than reveal himself to others. He has a wife (Felicity Jones) and a young child; he spends most of his time on jobs. When tragedy appears to strike, however, he becomes a different person. Not in outward appearance, but in what his actions reveal about his emotional state.
Narrated by Will Patton, “Train Dreams” is a tone poem about a man whose life is simple- he works, he has time with his coworkers as they eat and take breaks, and he spends his off time with his wife and child. The narration is intended to help us get into Grainier’s head, and to orient us to the life of the time. It’s a device that is effective to a point, but it also can dull the film’s use of images to tell Grainier’s story, as well. There are times when I would have rather Bentley had leaned more into letting his film’s beautiful images- shot by cinematographer Adolpho Veloso, and scored with a delicacy by Bryce Dessner- give us more insight into this man’s life than words; when he does that, the film is wonderful to watch unfold.
Edgerton is the central performance in “Train Dreams,” and he does terrific, quietly moving work. Everyone else in the film is intended to be a character who moves in and out of Grainier’s life, impacting it for their presence- and absence- in it. We get William H. Macy as an elder lumberjack who questions if its our place to destroy nature, and trees that have stood for hundreds of years. Jones is very good as Robert’s wife, but when he loses her in a fire, her absence from his life speaks greater volumes. Kerry Condon is good as a woman who’s lost, and gives Robert some sense of himself again. And Nathaniel Arcand is terrific as Ignatius Jack, a friend of Robert’s who is there for him when he needs companionship. “Train Dreams” didn’t completely work for me, but I can see it being a film I think about for a while.
