Gorgeous 'Train Dreams' is one of 2025's few must-sees
Rarely has the micro and macro blended so seamlessly. “Train Dreams,” focused on a somewhat ordinary man’s life in the 20th century and also a number of changes that happen to him and around him, contains much about topics as big as America and the people who live and shape it and yet feels so beautifully dialed into what it feels like to be Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton, excellent), railroad worker, logger, husband, father.
Directed/co-written by Clint Bentley (who co-wrote the very good, Oscar-nominated “Sing Sing”) from Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella, the film strikes the sort of balance between people and nature that virtually no filmmakers can achieve without becoming dull or thin. “Train Dreams” is Malick if Malick wasn’t vapid, and it has the power to sweep you away as Robert works until he has to learn a different field, no matter where it takes him. Meeting Gladys (Felicity Jones, also wonderful) changes his life and brings him joy but also the opportunity for sorrow. Together they build and create an oasis that is not impenetrable, and the power of the trees and the trains, fires and technology, exceeds and lasts longer than that of the people who sometimes create them and are often at their mercy.
Perhaps the narration (Will Patton) is occasionally a tad too direct, Bentley’s effort to maintain Johnson’s voice. But it also zooms out from the specific story being told to achieve a kind of gratitude and inevitable finality, like meaningful moments are both worth savoring and impossible to obtain forever, the speed of the future requiring appreciation of the present. There’s also terrific work from William H. Macy (as a logger named Arn! No more detail needed here) and Kerry Condon (as a woman who Robert meets later in his life) and immense beauty alongside cruelty, hard work not far from no work, and the passage of time as something alternately slow and grand.
Epic and small, lyrical but not without a story, this amazingly shot, timely tale of American growth, possibility, devastation and resilience is simply a great example of this kind of style done about as well as it can be.
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