Clint Bentley’s quietly stunning Train Dreams presents a life comprised of moments, centered on forests comprising individual trees. The trees fall, the trees grow back. The world changes, our lives go on. Co-written by Bentley’s Sing Sing collaborator Greg Kweda, Train Dreams focuses on Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), a logger just trying to build a small life with the woman he loves (Felicity Jones) on the land he loves. With Train Dreams, adapted from Denis Johnson’s novella of the same name, Bentley created a movie as small and intimate as two people living in a cabin on a remote acre of land, yet as vast and overwhelming as the forests of the American West, oscillating between close-ups of Edgerton’s face and landscape shots of trains rolling through the mountains, treetops kissing the sky, streams flowing through the land.
Grainier is a passive observer of his own life, haunted by his own inactivity and plagued by moments where he could have acted but didn’t, leading to him feeling cursed. This kind of storytelling could lead to an apathetic audience, but Bentley expertly uses this perspective to show the audience flashes of a changing America through the eyes of his protagonist—railroads being built, railroads becoming obsolete, racial tensions between white and Black Americans, violence against Chinese immigrants, disregard for worker safety in the name of progress, man landing on the moon, the creation of airplanes—while still building great affection for Grainier.
The film follows Grainier from job to job, venturing farther and farther from his home to meet the continued demand for spruce and oak as the country continues to develop. Grainier lives his life in two seasons, logging season and the off season. As the trips become longer and his daughter grows older, Grainier begins to consider a life centered at home instead of in the woods. Grainier and his wife dream of building their own logging mill, building a business that allows him to be present with his family, pulling him from the forests he’s cutting and anchoring him in the land on which he lives. But even in this dream, Grainier is a passive observer, hoping without taking action, moving forward on the path he’s on, once again too late to prevent tragedy.
Edgerton gives a stunning performance, beautifully complimented by Will Patton’s narration, as a man who has no choice but to keep going, keep waking up, keep going back into the forest, one foot in front of the other, even as he faces unfathomable grief. And even in his grief, Grainier is passive except for one moment late in the film where Grainier opens up to newcomer Claire Thompson (Kerry Condon), saying “sometimes it feels as though the sadness can eat you alive.” The sadness of Train Dreams could easily eat the audience alive, but much like Grainier, Bentley’s movie keeps going, through shots of the sun rising and setting, the trees growing around the boots nailed to the trunk to honor the death of a logger, trains moving along the rails while cars drive along the highway in the background.
In a Q&A at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival with Bentley, Kwedar, and Edgerton, moderated by Brian Tallerico, Bentley described Edgerton as a generous actor. Bentley himself is just as generous in his care for and celebration of the dignity of an ordinary life. Like the forests are made of millions of trees, our lives are made of millions of moments, big and small. The dead tree is just as important as the living tree, the ordinary life is just as important as the extraordinary life, the small moments are just as important as the big moments. May we all be so lucky to be able to see the forest and the trees of our lives.
