‘Train Dreams’ – A Review
By Katie Ward
“A sound rose in the auditorium like a wind coming from all four directions, low and terrifying, rumbling up from the ground beneath the floor, and it gathered into a roar that sucked at the hearing itself, and coalesced into a voice that penetrated into the sinuses and finally into the very minds of those hearing it, taking itself higher and higher, more and more awful and beautiful, the originating ideal of all such sounds ever made, of the foghorn and the ship’s horn, the locomotive’s lonesome whistle, of opera singing and the music of flutes and the continuous moanmusic of bagpipes. And suddenly it all went black. And that time was gone forever.”
― Denis Johnson, Train Dreams
Understated, meditative and languid, Train Dreams quietly manages to be perhaps the most luminous film of the year. Among its fellow Best Picture nominees it is a bit of an outlier, lacking the blockbuster quality possessed by Sinners, Marty Supreme or even Sentimental Value. It is, however, still a formidable opponent.
The film, directed by Clint Bentley, is adapted from Denis Johnson’s novella of the same name and it revels in the lyrical prose of the source material hedonistically. The story is in every inch of the scenery, the wide, rolling landscapes of pioneer era America, shifting and changing throughout the film as industrialization takes over and the wilderness begins to vanish. We are left with many long, lingering shots of the forest, the lake, the skyline, the homesteads, the rolling grass, the crackling campfire – yet the narrative never feels like it slogs or falters, even though these images don’t do anything to move it along, technically. But they are all the exposition that is needed, and Bentely is (wisely) aware of this.
Train Dreams follows logger and railroad worker Robert Grainier, played by a wonderfully understated John Edgerton. The narrative chronicles Grainier’s life, split between his time with his family and his time working. He is haunted by the death of a Chinese railroad worker whose murder he was inadvertently complicit in, and he struggles with a mortal dread after witnessing the accidental deaths of many of his coworkers on the logging trail. The times and landscape rapidly change and the world trundles onward – without him, it feels, making Grainer a true, bona-fide last of his kind. The film is at its best when Grainier is at home with his wife (Felicity Jones) and daughter, leading a life that is categorically boring and somehow incredibly profound, and it is better still when he is way out in the depths of the woods with the logging men.
It is here where William H. Macy plays his small but critical role as Arn Peeples, an aged logger who contributes basically nothing to the team but shares everything. “I worked on a peak outside of Bisbee, Arizona,” he says, “where we was only 11,12 miles from the sun. 116 degrees on the thermometer, and every degree was a foot long. And that was in the shade. And there weren’t no shade.” Peeples’ talkative, irritating persona gives way to an earnest profoudness as the film wears on, with Macy’s half-serious, half-joking delivery landing beautifully, cementing him as one of the film’s highlights.
The film is not without its flaws – it begins to feel slightly overwrought in places, and the voice of the narrator (Will Patton) feels unnecessary and quite out of place in a film that otherwise trusts its audience completely. But these flaws are minor, and Train Dreams prevails. Bryce Dessner’s score is outstanding and the performances even more so. Though nothing particularly startling or novel is said – life is short, times change, cherish the simple things, this is stuff we’re all aware of – you finish Train Dreams feeling like you know something you didn’t before.
Train Dreams is now available to watch on Netflix.
★ ★ ★ ★ ⯨
Photo Credit – Courtesy of Netflix
