Train Dreams Review

A Staggering Celebration of a Simple Life Lived

By: Marc Kozak

Train Dreams

A Staggering Celebration of a Simple Life Lived

By: Marc Kozak

There probably hasn't been a time in human history when we haven't romanticized the past. When our current struggles seem too hard to overcome, it's comforting to imagine living with simplicity and ease in a past that surely must have been free of the burdens that plague our present. How exciting it must have been to grow up in a younger America, a country full of energy and opportunity, where you didn't have to worry about things like social media, the crumbling environment, or politicians spouting dangerous nonsense on television.

What we often forget is that, in many ways, life in the olden days was significantly more dangerous. A bad cold could quickly develop into a fatal fever. Poor working conditions could make coming to work a daily struggle for survival. A fire could sweep through a town and destroy everything in its path. In 1900, the average life expectancy was just 32 years old. Even if certain things may have been simpler back then than they are now, it was a lot harder just to stay alive until the next sunrise.

Clint Bentley's Train Dreams is the story of a regular man just trying to get by in early 20th century Idaho, wanting nothing more than a quiet life on a little bit of land with his wife and child. Even though he doesn't ask for much, he goes through great struggles to get it, and even more hardship to try and keep it. It's a story of nothing more than life and death, the same story that countless lives have lived throughout history, unremembered and unremarked upon, but each beautiful in its own way. It's the kind of movie that makes you feel connected to everyone and everything; the kind of art that lets you glimpse the greater picture of humanity and see how your own small thread is part of a larger, grand tapestry that lasts forever.

" Train Dreams is the kind of art that lets you glimpse the greater picture of humanity and see how your own small thread is part of a larger, grand tapestry that lasts forever. "

The movie begins with appropriately grandiose narration from the smooth voice of Will Patton, who introduces us to Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), a stolid and uneducated man living in a small Idaho town, working the land as part of the labor force that cut down trees and built railways as part of the war effort in the 1910s. He meets and eventually marries the beautiful and strong-willed Gladys Oakley (Felicity Jones) and builds a log cabin on a small patch of land that the couple dreams of populating with children and happy memories. The happy couple is bristling with the possibilities of their seemingly wide-open future, and we immediately want nothing but the best for them.

Unfortunately, they do need money to survive and the logging jobs that Robert is qualified for take him far away from home for weeks and months at a time. Robert isn't too happy to be away for so long (especially once their daughter Kate is born), but he believes that if he can just put away some cash here and there, he can build a lumber mill near home and stop traveling. It's a daily struggle for Robert and Gladys, who cherish their limited time together even as it gets harder and harder to be continually apart.

It's a spectacularly gorgeous movie, full of lush, green forests and misty mountains, often shot at the magic hour to let the sun's rays shine through the leaves and fill the sky with hues of pink and blue. It's the kind of immense, breath-catching beauty that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible. Between the poetic narration, the gorgeous photography from cinematographer Adolpho Veloso, and the appropriately lush score by Bryce Dessner (a member of The National), you'd be hard pressed to find a more beautiful and senses-pleasing movie this year. It brings to mind the works of Terrence Malick and Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), movies that revel in the awe-inspiring grandeur of nature.

Some of the movie's best moments are simply spending time with the ragtag group of loggers that Robert spends most of his days with. It's a community full of grizzled, bearded men from all over the world who are hardened by the danger and physicality of the job, the meager pay they get for doing it, and the struggles that this kind of life puts on a man. Each of their stories are full of mystery and violence, and Robert quietly watches them from afar, listening to their tales by the light of the nightly campfire. He refuses to take action when an immigrant worker is suddenly seized for seemingly no reason, stunned by the casual brutality and afraid to get involved. The guilt stays with him for the rest of his days; “Do you think that the bad things we do follow us in life?” he asks the company's wise old explosives expert (the outstanding William H. Macy, in his best performance in many years). It's a question that returns as Robert starts to reflect on the damage they must be doing to the land itself by clearing trees to make way for human civilization.

It's these kinds of questions that haunt Robert, who is incapable of processing such emotions. Edgerton gives a career-best performance despite hardly saying more than two or three words for large chunks of time. His bearded face and wrinkled brow convey just about everything you need to know, while the voiceover adds lovely color to his inner thoughts. As time goes on, Robert finds himself increasingly unequipped to keep up with the times, feeling like a man out of time as the post-war industrial boom goes on without him. The second half of the movie feels surprisingly modern, as Robert faces increased isolation and loneliness, clinging to the simplicity of his past while the world becomes more complicated by the second. A missed connection with another isolated soul (Kerry Condon as a forestry services worker) only shows how stuck Robert is, unable to move past a dream that died a long time ago. It's almost unbearably melancholic; all of the beauty of the music and cinematography seem to turn into somber notes of tragedy, mourning a life that once flowered but has stayed shut for many years.

Working from a novella by Denis Johnson, Clint Bentley and co-writer Greg Kwedar (director of last year's Sing Sing) have created a visual prose poem full of wisdom and warmth, a captivating character study of a man that few would choose to make a character study of. It all feels like some kind of profound revelation, even as very little actually happens in terms of action or plot. You might find yourself suddenly tearing up at scenes that don't really seem to call for crying — such is the powerful emotional resonance of what has been created here.

It's a lovely experience, increasingly rare in today's cinematic environment, to feel so swept away by something as small as the portrayal of an individual life, lived simply. “It’s beautiful,” says a dying man in his final recollections. “All of it. Every bit of it.”