Train Dreams

★★★★ out of ★★★★

Train Dreams (2025)

Runtime: 102 minutes

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some violence and sexuality.

Clint Bentley's Train Dreams draws an uncanny amount of similarities to the more recent Propeller One-Way Night Coach (or vice versa). Both have narration and are essentially throwbacks to life in a specific era. But Train Dreams encompasses the life of Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) from the late 19th century to his death, chronicling his story, guilt, loss and search for meaning. It's so human, full of life. Which made me surprised that it came out of Netflix. The same one that releases lifeless products like Red Notice or Heart of Stone.

Without diving too much into the details, Train Dreams tracks Robert's life from his orphaned childhood, where he spends most of his years without any purpose or direction after dropping out of school. He then meets Gladys Olding (Felicity Jones), they get married, build a wooden cabin by a river and have a daughter Kate (Zoe Rose Short). Robert works in railroad construction, where he witness a Chinese worker thrown from a bridge, and his inability to help gives him a sense of guilt that he'll carry with him. He takes up seasonal logging and witnesses multiple tragedies, with the death of multiple co-workers from acts of vengeance or falling trees.

The pace is rather relaxed, and nothing significant happens. Train Dreams is a meditation of life, stripping away any storytelling or film-making tropes to tell the story of an ordinary man. Narrated by Will Patton, he brings a mythical-like voice that adds context to the scene, flowing with the images on the screen. He doesn't narrate often, but might also spell things a few times. Still, the scene and emotions conjured are just so powerful, you'll forget about it by the time it ends.

Performance is the soul of what makes Robert so human. There's a turning point halfway in where the cabin catches on fire, reducing it to a pile of ash. Gladys and Kate are nowhere to be seen, but Robert clings to the hope that they'll come back again. It isn't all just weepy sentimentality, but the denial, then acceptance of it that's heart-breaking. Edgerton captures the weight of what Robert has seen life and its events happen to him, embodying grief, the tiredness of it all in his eyes, and the desperate searching for any revelation or meaning. His occasional dreams remind and haunt him of the past, his guilt something that he refuses to let go, blaming it for the tragedies that befallen upon him.

Years go by and Robert leaves the world of logging, knowing that he can't catch up to the technological update of the modern world. Things in life just happen and you have to move on. Yet, you can feel the loneliness, sadness and need for redemption in him. The people he meet throughout his life are fleeting yet insightful, particularly on him crossing paths with Claire Thompson (Kerry Condon), who shares the same feeling of loss as Robert. She doesn't try to fix him, but merely provide optimism and connection. And speaking of the screen, Train Dreams is composed beautifully. Shot in 3:2 aspect ratio, you feel the height of the trees, the connection to nature, and a peek into the past.

The ending delves into his final days in the updated world, with him witnessing the space era while aimlessly wandering around in cities. A wolf-like girl appears injured outside his rebuilt cabin, one he hopefully supposes as his daughter, giving him a chance to properly care for her. Even when she disappears by daylight, part of his soul is healed. And amidst flying on a plane, the recollection of all memories, people and dialogue all come to him, him finally making sense of it all. Life itself - the joys and sorrows - he just feels connected to it all. This projects to every single one of us. How about us? What do we think of our lives at the end of it all? What was it like being human? That's the beauty of it.

I haven't been this intensely shook for a long time. I'll continue staying in the corner trying not to burst into tears.