Train Dreams

Rated PG-13 • Netflix

Netflix might be the undisputed leader among streaming services, but the company hasn’t yet managed to conquer the film awards season. Over the last seven years, the streaming giant has had many of its films nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards, but none have won—though it has had a couple of wins in both the best director and best supporting actress categories. This fall, Netflix continues its quest for the Oscars’ highest honor with a half-dozen prestige films it’s releasing alongside its usual slop. You know the kind: movies with beautiful, melancholic atmospherics that play well with critics but are usually ignored by general audiences.

One of the most beautiful and melancholic of this year’s lot is Train Dreams, directed by Clint Bentley from a script he co-wrote with Greg Kwedar. The film adapts Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name.

Joel Edgerton plays Robert Grainier, a logger working in the Pacific North­west. Robert spends more than 80 years in and around the same small town, joining logging crews long enough to scrape together a living. Born toward the end of the 19th century, he sees his little corner of America undergo extraordinary changes during his lifetime.

Robert is a quiet man, who doesn’t seem predisposed to self-reflection, but when he meets a young woman at church, his conception of life’s possibilities widens. The two marry, build a home, and have a child. Robert finds his greatest joy in his family, but financial necessity requires him to return to the logging camps for monthslong stints. After a bad experience working for a railroad company, Robert fears he’s been cursed, and his life takes a tragic turn.

In Train Dreams, Bentley eschews a typical narrative arc, relying on the character of Robert to tie the film together. We get a series of scenes—Robert as a young man, Robert in the logging camps, Robert at home, Robert riding the rails. Moments that seem scattered and disparate are really part of a connected whole because they are part of Robert’s experience. He remains somewhat inscrutable, a rock of a man who’s steadily eroded by the winds of change. Robert’s life acts as a metaphor for the film’s central theme: The world is both joyous and sorrowful and above all interconnected and beautiful.

These rather banal and heavy-handed observations concerning the world’s interconnectedness and the nature of passing time would be quite unforgivable in a less beautiful film, but as it so happens, with Train Dreams, Bentley has created an extraordinarily beautiful film.

The Pacific Northwest is intrinsically picturesque, but Adolpho Veloso’s cinematography captures the lush greens of the forest in such a way as to give the impression that the world is simultaneously very old and very new. The visuals are rugged and earthly, evoking a longing for simpler times.

Train Dreams has a runtime of only 102 minutes, but it doesn’t hurry Robert’s life. Bentley crafts spacious moments, echoing with silence, that allow the audience to drink in scenery. The film relies on a narration provided by Will Patton to give meaning to the events.

The cast provides lovely performances all round, despite the script’s sparse dialogue. Robert tends to be taciturn, but Edgerton’s patient expression carries its share of the dramatic load. In one scene, he utters the most heartbreakingly affecting lines I’ve witnessed in a film this year. The supporting actors are just as strong. Felicity Jones’ turn as Robert’s wife Gladys is sincere and joyful. William Macy plays Robert’s older friend and mentor in the logging camp who ponders the ethics of cutting down thousand-year-old trees. Kerry Condon lends her talents as a forester who carries her own hurts to the Pacific Northwest.

Train Dreams is rated PG-13 for violence and sexuality, but the film is relatively low on objectionable content. Logging camps are dangerous places, because of both the nature of the work and the nature of the men who perform it. The film also contains a brief moment of passion between Robert and Gladys, but the scene honors the actors’ modesty.

I’m not sure this film will get Netflix that coveted gold statuette for best picture, but it could be a winner with viewers in the mood for that beautiful, melancholic vibe.