‘Train Dreams’ Review: Joel Edgerton Shines in Contemplative Drama About Life and Technological Progress [A-] TIFF
“Timeless” is a word that gets thrown around a lot, particularly by movie critics to describe films that have lasting power because they are enjoyed by subsequent generations. Joel Edgerton’s new film, Train Dreams, traces the arc of a man’s life from the late 19th century through the mid-20th, is timeliness in another way. The story and its dual themes–the crushing weight of technological progress and the sweeping emotionality of going through life–may be set in the past, but they are very much about our present.
Train Dreams is based on a 2011 novella by Denis Johnson, and comes to the screen via a screenplay by Sing Sing duo Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley, who also directs, a follow-up to his touching film Jockey. Edgerton stars as Robert Granier, a man living in the American Pacific Northwest and working odd seasonal jobs as a lumberjack, train builder, carrier, and others. Early in the film he meets his eventual wife Gladys (Felicity Jones) at a local church and they fall in love and marry. The two build a remote cottage by a river, an idyllic setting for what is to be a lifelong, profound love. They later have a young daughter, Katie.
But Robert must spend extended periods away from his family to work, alongside other wayward men, for various logging, mining, and railroad companies. This makes him forlorn, pensive, and withdrawn—though he is keenly observant of the world that develops around him. He encounters a varied crew of individuals, from a witty explosives expert played by William H. Macy, to a progressive forest ranger played by Kerry Condon. Will Patton provides a steadying, voiceover narrative of Robert’s life and, most importantly, of his inner thoughts and feelings. Though Edgerton is excellent at conveying Robert’s inner voices in his quiet but nuanced performance, Robert is far too introverted to express any of them himself.
The years roll along, slowly at first and faster later. In the third act, the movie speeds up past Robert’s last few decades in a way that feels hurried and even lacking. Perhaps the allegory is that the days grow long but the years short as one ages, but by then you will be so into Robert’s internal and external emotional journey that you will be left a little bereft, wishing for more.
Before Train Dreams gets to that point, however, we accompany Robert in life’s many journeys. He experiences deep happiness along his wife and daughter, one that he later looks back on with wistful contentment, as well as profound, indescribable loss that he also carries for the rest of his days. He observes the changing world around him and is astounded by the complexity of man, including his capacity for wonderment—especially through the eyes of the forest ranger—but also for malice and cruelty—especially through the racist treatment of Asian immigrants in the Pacific Northwest.
The title of the story, meanwhile, refers to a recurring motif that haunts Robert. Vivid dreams of danger and impending catastrophes. This is one of the elements of his tragedy, that his otherwise peaceful life is beset with a persistent, impending sense of doom. Bad things inevitably happen over the course of a human life, so the fact that Robert has to live through them before they even occur is saddest of all.
Edgerton’s gentle performance and Bentley’s thoughtful direction add to the grandeur of Adolpho Veloso’s cinematography, which focuses on the wide beauty of the world as a way to remind you of the movie’s love for life itself. Bryce Dessner’s philharmonic score is equally inclusive and emotive. They would be the movie’s strongest elements, except you have the very rewarding script to contend with.
Through very simple, mundane moments, Train Dreams portrays an encyclopedic understanding of life. A song sang next to a fire, an encounter with a fugitive, a sleepy afternoon by a meadow. These little episodes shape a person’s existence in ways the man may not immediately understand, but that this thoughtful film does.
And the wonderment and opprobrious stress of technological progress is a significant part of this narrative. The world changes so viciously around Robert—from the pre-World War I handheld saws he used, to the single engine planes he rode to see the world’s beauty like the birds do—that he cannot fully comprehend it. How a person exists within this unforgiving world, one which organizes around machines and far-away entities, around powerful men that control these forces, is a mystery that eludes Robert. Train Dreams takes no explicit position as to whether the rapid advancements in technology during our modern lifetime is greater or lesser than that which occurred during Robert’s, but the analogy is right there—quiet, yet powerful and undeniable like everything else in this film.
Long after the credits roll, Train Dreams will linger in your mind and soul, its melancholic beauty easing you into contemplating not just the relentless advance of industry, but the ephemeral yet everlasting sparks of joy and grief that define a single lifetime. Bentley’s purposeful adaptation honors Johnson’s elegiac prose, allowing moments of silence and sweeping landscape to speak volumes about isolation and hope.
If the story ultimately hurtles too quickly toward its inevitable conclusion, it’s only because, like Robert Granier, we wish to remain a little longer within the film’s world, suspended between memory and dream. Or perhaps it is because the filmmakers are smart enough to realize that life is both infinitely complex but also defyingly simple, or at least frustratingly undefinable. The only way to explain it, is to just live it.
Grade: A-
This review is from the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival where Train Dreams had its international premiere. The film will be released in select theaters on November 7 and on Netflix November 21.
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