Train Dreams

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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From director Clint Bentley, “Train Dreams” is an adaptation of the Denis Johnson novel of the same name. It is well acted with a solid cast. While it is somber and understated, its visual style highlights the majesty of nature. Profoundly existential in tone, it often has the rhythm of a horror film, underscoring the neutrality of the natural world that refuses to bend under humankind. 

Robert (Joel Egerton) is a humble logger during the turn of the 20th century. Robert looks forward to steady work but he’s not particularly ambitious. By chance he meets Gladys (Felicity Jones), a very attractive young woman. Robert is smitten by the more sophisticated lady, and the pair decide to couple, building a house on an acre of land. The two have a baby daughter.

Robert becomes discouraged. He witnesses the horrible murder of a Chinese coworker as the nation is gripped with violent xenophobia. He is also worked to exhaustion, away from the family for a month at a time as he becomes increasingly weak.

One day when Robert is away on a job, his home catches fire, presumably consuming his wife and daughter in a blaze. He races home only to find a black smoldering lot.

Robert sleeps and lives on the empty lot prone to freezing temperatures and broiling heat. Slowly he starts to rebuild a home in vain hopes that his family will come back. Robert is plagued with vivid nightmares and blighting guilt. Rapid images attack him with sorrowful menace.

He is a man without rest, struggling to find purpose.

Meanwhile, the natural world persists. A dazzling blue sky. A tree towering with wisdom.

The film highlights the mania of Robert’s friend Arn, an explosives master (William H. Macy), together with the dispassionate wonder of the environment and its wildlife. Boom accompanies beauty.

Echoing tones of Sydney Pollock’s “Jeremiah Johnson” (1972) with the plain objectivity of Paul Schrader’s work, specifically “Oh, Canada” (2024) in its illustration of the world becoming more impersonal and rife with technology even including a narration which both films share here.

Just as Robert is about to give up, he meets a warm forester Claire (Kerry Condon). One wonders if it is enough. He is confused by reflective surfaces and television. The concept of outer space is beyond him.

Soon after, the passage of life tells Robert that he is part of the Earth and the air, an ingredient of nature, both stable and transient.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com