Movie Review – Train Dreams
Principal Cast : Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon, William H Macy, Will Patton, Nathaniel Arcand, John Diehl, Paul Schneider, Clifton Collins Jr, Alfred Hsing, Chuck Tucker, John Patrick Lowrie.
Synopsis: Train Dreams is the moving portrait of Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker who leads a life of unexpected depth and beauty in the rapidly-changing America of the early 20th Century.
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Minor spoilers are contained within this review.
Train Dreams is an adaptation of Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name, chronicling the life of an itinerant railroad labourer working on the expanding rail lines that carved across the American continent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Told largely through solemn, reflective voice-over narration and anchored by a quietly devastating performance from Joel Edgerton — who somehow missed out on an Oscar nomination for his work here — the film is a profoundly affecting meditation on labour, loss and the relentless passage of time. The film sits within the Netflix stable, a studio I’ve long lamented for unleashing a seemingly endless onslaught of dreck onto the cinematic landscape. Pleasingly, Train Dreams rises well above that sludge, emerging as one of the most remarkable film experiences of 2025 and fully deserving of its Best Picture nod.
Edgerton plays Robert Grainier, an orphaned drifter who finds purpose working as a lumberjack for the railroad as it pushes westward across Idaho at the turn of the twentieth century. Initially isolated and resigned to a solitary existence, Robert eventually meets the spirited Gladys (Felicity Jones). Together they build a modest but idyllic life, raising their young daughter Kate in a log cabin Robert constructs beside a river near Bonners Ferry. For months at a time, however, Robert is drawn away from home by railroad work — a brutally dangerous profession that claims lives with alarming regularity — during which he forms passing friendships and acquaintances that quietly shape his reserved, unassuming worldview. When tragedy strikes his family, Robert retreats once more into grief-stricken solitude, emotionally hollowed out by loss. It isn’t until he later encounters Forest Ranger Claire (Kerry Condon) that he’s reminded, tentatively, that life still holds meaning and connection, even as the world continues to move on without him.
Director Clint Bentley has cited the influence of Terrence Malick on Train Dreams, and that influence is unmistakable. Bentley borrows Malick’s dreamlike visual language and reliance on voice-over as emotional counterpoint to the imagery. My long-standing detestation of Malick’s work is well documented elsewhere on this site, but in contrast I’d argue that Train Dreams succeeds precisely where Malick so often leaves me cold. The writing here is purposeful, the characterisation grounded, and the direction far more disciplined and emotionally legible than a style I usually find deeply frustrating.
Bentley shares a writing credit with Greg Kwedar — the pair previously collaborated on Sing Sing — and together they imbue the film with an ethereal, lyrical quality that’s at once melancholy and deeply resonant. My initial reaction was that Train Dreams is to American frontier life and westward expansion what The Shawshank Redemption is to prison films: a definitive exemplar of its subgenre, and one of the most beautiful and haunting films of the year. The film more than earns its Adapted Screenplay nomination. As an adaptation, it’s superbly realised for the screen, deftly navigating the potential pitfalls of heavy voice-over narration. Delivered with gravelly, weathered authority by Will Patton (Armageddon, Remember The Titans), the narration never slips into cliché or redundancy, instead deepening the film’s emotional texture and sense of half-mythologised memory.
Edgerton’s performance as Robert may well be the finest of his career. He’s grim, taciturn and contemplative, a man of few words whose inner life is expressed almost entirely through stillness and observation. His connection with Jones’ Gladys is tender and unforced, while his interactions with the film’s rotating ensemble of side characters — including William H. Macy in a role that recalls Shawshank’s Brooks Hatlen — form one of the film’s quiet emotional backbones. The tragic fate that befalls Gladys and young Kate serves as the crucible upon which the film’s gravitas turns, and Edgerton captures the hollowed-out grief of such loss with devastating restraint. The film aches with melancholy and rumination, yet it never feels slow or indulgent. Instead, Train Dreams has the strange comfort of a simple story told with absolute confidence.
Watching it feels a bit like sitting beside a campfire on a cold night — rugged up, still, and reflective. It shares that same oddly comforting quality often attributed to The Shawshank Redemption: not because it’s easy viewing, but because it understands the power of patience and emotional honesty. I mention the campfire sensation only because such scenes recur throughout the film — and frankly, if you don’t feel some primal, genetic sense of safety and calm around a wood fire in the wilderness, you may want to see someone about that. Visually, Train Dreams is ravishing. Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso deserves significant praise for his work, which balances naturalistic beauty with a haunting, dreamlike quality. There’s a faint trace of Kubrick’s compositional discipline blended with Malick’s poetic visual language, and the colour palette is nothing short of divine. The Idaho forests are gorgeously realised, the riverside cabin Robert builds for his family feels like a prototypical slice of frontier heaven, and there’s a subtle but persistent sense of modernity encroaching on Robert’s world.
One small moment encapsulates this beautifully: Robert, who has spent years felling trees with nothing but an axe and raw labour, encounters an early chainsaw. It’s a quiet, almost throwaway scene, but it speaks volumes about a world changing faster than he can keep up with — and a man who never truly felt he belonged in it anyway.
What a wonderful film. A hearty recommendation to seek it out on Netflix, Train Dreams is a contemplative, masterfully crafted rumination on love, loss, loneliness and the quiet dislocation that comes when the world moves on without you. I loved it from the opening frames. Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones and Kerry Condon are all terrific — Edgerton the clear lynchpin — and Clint Bentley’s direction is stellar across the board. A must-watch for anyone who still believes in the power of great cinema.
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