Train Dreams

TRAIN DREAMS (15)

D: Clint Bentley

Netflix / Black Bear / Kamala (Marissa McMahon, Teddy Schwarzman, Will Janowitz, Ashley Schlaifer & Michael Heimler)

US 🇺🇸 2025

102 mins

Drama

W: Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar [based on the novel by Denis Johnson]

DP: Adolpho Veloso

Ed: Parker Laramie

Mus: Bryce Dessner

Joel Edgerton (Robert Grainier), Felicity Jones (Gladys Olding Grainier), Kerry Condon (Claire Thompson), William H. Macy (Arn Peeples), Will Patton (narrator)

*SPOILERS*

Train Dreams is one of those films I’d consider a visual poetry, rather than a standard cinematic drama, akin to the works of Terrence Malick, though this is more similar to Days of Heaven than the famous auteur’s more recent works.

Clint Bentley is the director here, co-writing an adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novel and aided by some sublime cinematography from Adolpho Veloso as Will Patton narrates about the life of Robert Grainier, a labourer on the railroads of the Northwest throughout the 20th Century, haunted by witnessing the murder of a Chinaman by a mob for reasons that are unclear and, eventually, grieving the death of his wife and daughter.

It really is quite a simple film about a simple man, but there’s something quite hauntingly mesmerising about it, with Joel Edgerton giving one of his very finest performances as the lead, but the true star of this picture is the stunning way it’s photographed.

8/10