Spoilers ahead!
As a self-confessed cinephile, I’ve watched a lot of films over the years. Some of them I forget almost immediately. I might remember that I watched them, but not much else. Others stay with you long after the credits roll.
There are films I gave no thought to the day after I had watched despite anticipating it. Example is Predator: Badlands (sorry). And then there are films that become part of you in some way, like The Lord of the Rings. You can watch them years later and they still feel familiar.
I’m happy to say Train Dreams sits much closer to that second group.
It’s a quiet film, but not a forgettable one.
The film gently pulls you into the life of Robert Grainier, an orphan who became a railroad labourer living in the wilderness of the Idaho Panhandle. There’s no big build-up. You just start watching him live his life. He’s a shy, kind man who does hard physical work to provide for his family. He doesn’t talk much. He just gets on with things. He works, loves, and tries to do right by the people around him.
Joel Edgerton plays him in a very restrained way, which suits the character. Nothing feels exaggerated. You believe this man exists. We meet Arn Peeples and Billy along the way.
As the film goes on, we also see what Grainier loses. He loses his family. He loses the life he thought he would have. They never got the Sawmill. By the end, he is a man who will leave the world with no heir, unsure if anyone will really remember him or grieve him when he’s gone.
And yet, he lived.
That’s what stayed with me.
The film doesn’t try to impress you or explain what it all means. It doesn’t push a message. It simply shows you a life. One that was full of work, love, loss, and long stretches of quiet.
Watching Train Dreams makes you think, about how many lives are lived like this. It makes you wonder what the point of it all is. And there’s a quiet sadness in knowing that Denis Johnson, who wrote this novella, never lived to see it transformed into a film.