Gorgeously shot and hypnotically quiet, director Clint Bentley‘s “Train Dreams” is a slow, meditative experience that’s more like drifting through a living photograph than watching a traditional narrative unfold. It’s undeniably beautiful, but it’s also the kind of film you have to be in the right mood for: patient, contemplative, and willing to sit with its brooding stillness. For viewers seeking action or momentum, this won’t deliver that kind of thrill. But for those open to atmosphere, introspection, and texture, it’s deeply absorbing.
Adapted from Denis Johnson’s acclaimed novella, the story follows Robert Grainier (played with incredible restraint by Joel Edgerton) through the early decades of the 20th century in the Pacific Northwest. Orphaned young and raised among loggers and railroad men, Robert spends his life amid towering forests and the rise of American industry. Edgerton gives one of his most quietly commanding performances, portraying a man shaped by hard labor, isolation, and the vastness of the natural world around him. His silence carries meaning while his stillness holds entire histories.
Robert’s life gains warmth and purpose when he marries Gladys (Felicity Jones), a character who brings grace and tenderness to the film’s most intimate moments. Their marriage, the creation of their home, and the birth of their daughter offer Robert a sense of belonging and hope. Yet the work that sustains him also tears him away from that domestic sanctuary, and tragedy arrives like a shadow that keeps stretching across his life. The film leans into the sense that Robert is living under some obscure curse, a feeling that lingers in the quiet spaces between scenes and in the strange, dreamlike imagery that Bentley threads throughout the story.
Bentley’s direction, along with Greg Kwedar’s screenplay (which Bentley also co-wrote), honors Johnson’s original tone of mysterious, poetic, and tinged with the surreal. The film moves with the rhythms of memory more than plot, drifting from logging sites to railroad camps to Robert’s lonely cabin, capturing both the brutality and the beauty of a country in the midst of unstoppable change. The story doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of the era, including the horrendous mistreatment of Chinese immigrant workers that’s stark and unsettling.
The film is visually beautiful, too, capturing the Pacific Northwest in all its vastness. There are misty valleys, endless treelines, and the raw violence of early industrial expansion tearing into untouched landscapes. Nearly every frame of this film could hang in a gallery. In fact, watching it is a lot like spending a couple of hours in your local art museum.
Not everyone will connect with a film this restrained, but for those who appreciate contemplative storytelling, poetic imagery, and character-driven meditation, “Train Dreams” is a haunting, beautifully crafted piece of cinema.
By: Louisa Moore
Screen Zealots 