In Train Dreams, Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) carries the emotional weight of eight decades of raw endurance on his frame. The film, directed with a lyric but gritty sweep by Clint Bentley, is a chronicle of the toll of a life of labor, loss, and persistence carved from the forest and rail lines of Idaho— a ritual of memory and consequence.
The film moves through eras of American transformation—railroads, logging, farming, the rise of industry, and the reach of space exploration. Each chapter is marked by encounters with men and women whose lives end in sudden violence or accident, their stories ingrained into Grainier’s memory. Bentley frames these events with restraint, allowing the gravity to sink and settle,
Edgerton’s performance is a ledger of scars and endurance, of presence that grows heavier as the decades pass—a life toiled away in railroad construction, logging camps, and the solitude of a cabin rebuilt after fire. The early years are marked by the warmth and resilience of time spent with his wife, Gladys (Felicity Jones). The middle is lodged in the encouragement and the spark of renewal that Claire Thompson (Kerry Condon) offers him. He is both fulfilled and haunted by his friendship with co-worker Arn Peeples (William H. Macy), a fellow logger whose tragic fate reminds him of the fragility of labor. The steady friendship of Ignatius Jack (Nathaniel Arcand) offers Robert balance and continuity when grief threatens to consume him.
The wildfires that take Gladys and Kate are turning points, the elemental forces that Robert must overcome and live with. His grief is Train Dreams’ overarching presence. He has visions of Kate, tender dreams that leave space for belief in her return. The cabin, rebuilt and weathered, becomes Robert’s vessel of endurance, a place where he waits, walks, and listens for the spirits of his family.
Will Patton’s narration recounting Robert’s flight in a biplane closes the film with proper solemn grace. It is a luminous sequence, the culmination of Train Dream’s themes of connection, memory, and the merging of life’s fragments into one single moment of release.
Train Dreams is a film etched from timber and smoke. Bentley’s direction, Edgerton’s performance, and the ensemble cast create a movie that honors the grit of labor, the endurance of memory.
Letter Grade: A, Streaming on Netflix.
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