Train Dreams refuses to pander to an attention-deficit audience and is not afraid of the silence of emotional depth, observes Deepa Gahlot.
Key Points
- Train Dreams stars Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones.
- The film has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Song.
- Train Dreams is streaming on Netflix.
Dennis Johnson's 120-page novella, Train Dreams, published in 2011, is a poetic, meditative work about the life of a man the world would consider unremarkable. Chris Bentley has turned it into a visually stunning film that captures a fast-changing country. Progress often leaves people like Robert Grainier behind, but he is a man who marches to his own drummer.
What Train Dreams is about
Grainier (played with gentle dignity by Joel Edgerton, surprisingly snubbed for an Academy Award) is a logger and railroad worker in early 20th century American West. It is cowboy country, but Bentley's film has none of the rugged glamour that has been portrayed by scores of movies about the Wild West. These men chop trees, saw logs, and then move on to the next site that needs workers. They live rough in the forest, but most would not swap this back-breaking work for another life.
Tentative friendships are formed without expectations or lasting attachments -- there is a man, the nameless narrator (Will Patton) says, who never spoke a word to his fellow workers. When a logger happened to die on a site, the rest of them just nailed his boots to a tree and carried on.
Giant trees were cut for lumber to build train tracks, bridges and buildings in a nation with growing demands, though the workers did not benefit much from their labour. The cruelly denuded forests did not concern anyone, in the belief that trees would grow back. Only one old logger (William H Macy) warned of the consequences of chopping 500-year-old trees that had souls.
Robert marries Gladys (Felicity Jones) and they have a daughter, Kate. The scenes of them in the log cabin they built by a riverside are sweet and tender, so what follows is much more tragic. Robert and Gladys want to put away money to build their own sawmill on their land, so that he would not need to spend so much time away from home. When he returns from a job one day, a forest fire has destroyed his home. Gladys and Kate are missing, presumed dead.
The film then holds on to Robert in his grief. He rebuilds the cabin, and does odd jobs to survive. When he goes back to a logging site, younger men have arrived, machines are being used, and the older workmen feel out of place.
What defines Grainier in Train Dreams
Train Dreams' narrative is non-linear, unfolding as a series of memories, dreams, hallucinations, as Granier copes with loss and crushing sorrow. Over time, he acquires a spiritual stillness, and comes to be known as a hermit of the mountains. He lives by himself and keeps his interactions with people in town to a minimum. His brief friendships with a trader (Nathaniel Arcand) and a government employee (Kerry Condon) offer some measure of support, however fleeting.
Grainier belongs to a dying breed of men, who were proud to be defined by their strength and hardy temperaments, unfazed by a harsh lifestyle. With increasing dependence on automation, this kind of physical labour becomes almost redundant, making Granier and others like him obsolete.
Why Train Dreams is worth a watch
Beautifully shot by Adolpho Veloso with natural light enhancing the stunning landscapes that become a part of Granier's solitary existence, just like the natural sounds of the forest. Train Dreams is a masterful and uncompromising film that refuses to pander to an attention-deficit audience and is not afraid of the silence of emotional depth.
The film has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Song.
Train Dreams streams on Netflix.
