Based on a 2011 novella by celebrated American novelist Denis Johnson (who died in 2017), Train Dreams is a brilliant adaptation by writer-director Clint Bentley. Gently and lyrically, it tells the very ordinary life of an itinerant logger helping clear the land of America in the early Twentieth Century, a very ordinary life that is revealed, through memories and dreams and stunning American wilderness, to be extraordinary, blessed with an embrace of beauty and human variety. Robert Grainier, played with great depth by Joel Edgerton, almost stumbles upon his true love, Gladys (another fine performance, this time by Felicity Jones), and his life with her and their baby, punctuated by unbearably homesick stretches traveling by train to remote logging stands, is sublimely portrayed. Train Dreams is not a film underpinned by plot (although Bentley rolls through Grainier’s life with quite some tension, using, among other artistry, the atmospheric voiceover of Will Patton), rather it is mood and visuals and Edgerton’s stoic but expressive face that carry it to a highly satisfying end. Adolpho Veloso’s cinematography is a key feature, as is Bryce Dressner’s oblique, haunting soundtrack. Memorable.
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