‘Train Dreams’ Review: Joel Edgerton Stars in a Moving Examination of Life’s Fleeting, Stunning Nature [A] – Sundance Film Festival

Days spent in the lush green forests of the Pacific Northwest, a child’s giggles bubbling up by a stream, a warm drink shared with a new friend. These are some of the sparse moments of joy in Train Dreams, an adaptation of the Denis Johnson novella of the same name from the writers behind Sing Sing, Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar. It follows the life of Robert Granier (Joel Edgerton), a logger and railroad worker seeking fulfillment at the start of the 20th century. The film is beautiful and elegiac, with images that play more like memories than scenes. Grounded with humanism, the film allows a quiet, average life the chance to be explored on a grand scale.

We learn about Granier’s childhood, and the rest of his life, through a narrator (Will Patton, who also narrated the audiobook). An orphan who finds himself in the Pacific Northwest, Granier eventually meets Gladys (Felicity Jones). The two fall in love and build a cabin together in the forests of Washington state. Granier begins working on railroads and logging operations, meeting figures who will loom large for the rest of his days. Like Arn Peeples (William H. Macy), an older logger who works with explosives and spouts wisdom about life and songs about the trees. The work they do is demanding, drawn-out, and keeps Granier away from the only people he really cares about: his wife and daughter. When they go missing after a devastating fire, Grainier spends the rest of his life trying to fill the void of grief left in its wake. Ultimately, Train Dreams is a moving examination of life’s fleeting, stunning nature.

A bounty of beautiful and poetic imagery finds itself scattered throughout its melancholy story. After a harrowing accident, which sends horses downhill and claims three lives, leaving a resonant thump in the air from the treefall, we see Arn nail the workers’ boots to a tree by their graves as a mark of their existence. Later, when Granier returns to that same area of the woods, the boots reappear. This time they are growing with the tree and into the flesh of the trunk. An emblem of time moving forward. Granier’s dreams, of a home bathed in fire and a train plowing through the night, are also full of haunting and memorable imagery. They are reflective of his deepest fears and regrets. He often sees the Chinese railroad worker he failed to protect from being thrown off a bridge early on in the film, and is convinced the dead man has cursed him. “Do you think the bad things we do in this life follow us?” Granier asks Arn later on in the film. 

The performances in Train Dreams add to the film’s vulnerable center. At the heart of it all is Edgerton as Granier. His work is straightforward, but not necessarily simple. Beneath the soft spoken and outwardly masculine nature of the logger, there is a deep emotional well. Edgerton pulls from it deftly, letting a gesture or a line delivery broadcast Granier’s inner life. When Granier asks Gladys to say his name as they picnic by a riverbank early in their courtship, the gentle, warm cadence of Edgerton’s voice belies his stoic appearance. – As Arn, Macy acts as a voice of wisdom for Granier, but through his work, you can feel the weight of the life lived before logging in every scene. His choices, like the way he pauses after a line, or the way he pulls out a harmonica at camp one night, flesh out the character and make Arn feel lived in. Modulating between a folksy charm and wizened attitude about the world, Macy never stumbles. Journeying more into the supporting work, the women of Train Dreams do wonders with the little they are given. Jones brings a bright and sturdy approach to the role of Gladys, making what would otherwise be a forgettable role enduring. Kerry Condon does meaningful work here as well as Claire, a forest service worker who lives alone and might be the only other character who can really understand Granier’s pain. 

Ultimately, the film stands alone as its own kind of dream with its lyrical imagery and unforgettable characters. Buoyed by a deeply tender and humanistic script from Bentley and Kwedar, Train Dreams lingers in the mind long after its over.

Grade: A

This review is from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival where Train Dreams had its world premiere. The film was picked up by Netflix for release in the U.S.