‘Train Dreams’ Confronts Ecological Conservation, 20th-Century Capitalism Through a Faceless American Figure

It takes a special kind of film to be aware of its surroundings. It is one thing to fetishise nature and invite comparison to the sweeping scale of a Terrence Mallick film but Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams does something interesting with the vessel of a meandering Mallick film. It cuts and splices the essential bits of a man’s journey fuelled by cosmic wonder: the meaning of it all. And it does that using a specific means: a voiceover (by Will Patton). 

An expository voice-over, which explains the inner rumblings of a character, can be a divisive choice. Especially for purists, who consider cinema a visual storytelling medium, a voiceover can also be deemed a cheat-code. What you think of this device, will inform a large part of what you end up thinking of Clint Bentley’s film. I found it gimmicky at first, but then I grew used to it and eventually didn’t mind it.

Adapted from a 2011 novella written by Denis Johnson, Train Dreams tells the tale of a Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton). An orphan who never knew his parents, Robert drops out of school early, and starts working in the area of the Great Northern Railway in the state of Washington. He was one of the millions of faceless founding figures of America, laying down the track for what would become of the most important railway routes – between America and Canada – and then later working as a lumberjack for the burgeoning capitalism during the early parts of 20th century. 

Robert is a haunted man noticing the callous injustice around him, even if he doesn’t talk about it. How Asian residents are exiled by White neighbours, or how a Chinese colleague of his is flung from a bridge, as Robert can’t even muster the courage to let out a whimpered protest. The answer isn’t said out loud but it’s all too obvious. Working with several crews over the years, Robert leans in on the wisdom of more experienced men around him.

One person in particular – Arn Peeples (William H. Macy) – tells him if he had any answers to Robert’s questions, he wouldn’t be lying next to him in a tent in the middle of nowhere. Despite working in the most gorgeous places, Robert also sees nature at its most formidable, nurturing and destroying with the same amount of ambivalence.

Bentley’s film chronicles the tenderness and awe in Robert’s seemingly ‘ordinary’ life, most of which isn’t immediately apparent to him. Robert meets Gladys (Felicity Jones) at church; they soon become inseparable, get married and build a home. 

There’s a sensational quality to this stretch, where DOP Adolpho Vesolo seems to be working with extra care to showcase Robert and Gladys’s suburban bliss. However, Bentley contrasts this with the couple worrying about shaping a better future for themselves. In doing that, Bentley and co-writer Greg Kwedar showed how people tend to be consumed by how much better their life could be, thus becoming oblivious to how good they have it. 

Robert and Gladys look for ways for him to spend less time away from home, as he takes up odd jobs in the nearby town. The voiceover recounts how this phase in Robert, Gladys and daughter Kate’s life was the most financially strained, but they were the happiest. 

When Robert is returning from what he thinks is his last assignment as a lumberjack, giving them enough money to put into a saw mill, he sees a wildfire. His cabin in the woods has been reduced to ashes, Gladys and Kate are nowhere to be found. Robert sleeps at the site of the burned cabin for weeks, hoping his superhuman resolve will somehow result in Gladys and Kate being found.

At first, it appears as if Robert won’t survive this tragedy. Relying on the generosity of a friendly neighbour, he grieves his small, tiny family and gets back on his feet. 

Bentley’s film remains stuck with Robert’s grief – a risky move, narratively, because grief can get monotonous very quickly. Even as the world around him changes, new equipment and blood enter lumberjacking, his fallen colleagues (signified beautifully with their boots nailed between two trees to mark their graves) forgotten, mankind reaches space – he still dreams of his wife and daughter. He sees vivid dreams, imagines them whispering around him never turning around to look at them. 

Then he meets a newly-appointed forest officer, Claire (Kerry Condon), and finds out he isn’t the only one going through such grief. He walks, sees a freak performance and sobs uncontrollably as he realises there are no answers to his questions: Why him? What’s the point in continuing to live with this grief that threatens to eat him up on most days?

Bentley’s film is epic in its scope, offering commentary on ecological conservation, unchecked capitalism of the 20th century, and the faceless ancestors who play a significant part in nation building – the ‘different’ ones, who dare to question, probe and seek. 

In its stillness and sorrow, Train Dreams finds the whole universe embedded in a seemingly unremarkable man’s life. 

*Train Dreams is streaming on Netflix.

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