There’s a pivotal scene in “Train Dreams” where a group of loggers gather to mourn a fellow worker who has been killed by a falling branch. The logger delivering the eulogy brings up the idea of retribution – that if you mess with the trees, they’ll mess with you right back.
He’s trying to make sense of the death, of the many deaths in the 20th century logging industry that stem from random branches falling from the sky. But this man was different. He respected trees, their age and their wisdom. So, why did this one decide to enact its revenge?
“I don’t know what to take from that,” he says, an edge of concern tinging his melancholy.
One of the loggers in the funeral crowd is Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), the subject of “Train Dreams,” the new film based on the novella of the same name by Denis Johnson. Robert is the lens through which the story explores American expansion, manifest destiny, the meaning of life – you know, simple, easy subjects. But director Clint Bentley and his co-writer Greg Kwedar seem to have a talent for boiling down complex themes to their basic human components – they did the same thing with 2023’s “Sing Sing” (Kwedar directed that one).
Just like with “Sing Sing,” in “Train Dreams” Bentley and Kwedar take a story that could easily feel trite or overwrought and instead come up with something deeply humane. “Train Dreams” sometimes gets close to toeing that line, but, particularly with the help of Edgerton’s subtlety and evocative cinematography from Adolpho Veloso, the film beautifully explores the tension between beauty and violence, between meaning and happenstance, and how to go on living nonetheless.
“Train Dreams” leads us through Robert’s adult life as he helps build railroads across the United States, a job that keeps him away from his wife, Gladys (Felicity Jones) and his young daughter for months at a time. In keeping with the movie’s literary roots, Will Patton serves as the film’s narrator. This omniscient look into Robert’s mind doesn’t feel overplayed, but rather – through Patton’s wise and folksy affectation – lends the story the essence of a fable.
There’s an inciting incident early on in “Train Dreams” where Robert witnesses the death of a Chinese logger at the hands of white men. While Robert is working alongside the worker, these men come and drag him away, abruptly throwing him off of an elevated track. It’s brutal and fast, leaving Robert forever asking: What did the man do?
This is how Robert thinks about the world, in terms of action and reaction. What did this man do to deserve such a punishment? This incident, and the fact that he can’t come up with a good answer, marks the beginning of a shift in Robert’s worldview. “Train Dreams” is well aware of the beauty of the natural world (it’s hard not to be, when seen through Veloso’s emotional lens), but also the quickness of violence – how fast it comes and goes, almost like an afterthought. What is the sense in a branch falling and killing a good man? What is the sense in a fire destroying an entire town?
And where is the sense in pressing farther and farther into the new world? There is a way to read these random bursts of violence as a warning. “Train Dreams” takes place during a time when white settlers were already well into westward expansion, building railroads with the help of the labor of tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants. These men were rapidly shaping a world that had shaped itself for centuries, never stopping to think if they were welcome in the first place. But, even as “Train Dreams” explores the concept of manifest destiny – a concept rooted in white American exceptionalism – it does so not from the perspective of moguls, or greedy businessmen, but from unremembered, working men. Not the arbiters of destiny, but the men tasked with carrying it out nonetheless.
Robert stands at the center of it all, his life as insignificant as it is epic. Before he dies, he will see a man land on the moon, an unfathomable feat to a rural, cabin-dwelling logger. Edgerton, who has the ability to carry such a frightening edge, is almost unbearably tender in his approach. Robert is fairly uncomplicated, which makes his sudden reckoning with the world around him all the more stunning. As the world keeps hurdling on around him like an unstoppable train, Robert begins to realize (too late, as it always happens) that his life is not about a greater purpose, or some fated destiny, but rather parsing your way through the madness to something like happiness.
Robert’s moments with his daughter and Gladys, no matter how small, feel monumental in the face of this hard, brutal world. The pathway the film takes with Gladys’ character is one of the times it comes close to overstepping that line of emotionality between effective and affected, but the spouses’ moments of quiet domesticity, whether it be chopping vegetables or talking about their future, are moments of quiet rebellion – somehow more important than so-called progress, and more significant than a man on the moon.