In this high-speed modern age, it’s hard to recall a time when much of the country was nearly inaccessible. No airports or interstate “super-highway” systems existed, just a little over a hundred years ago. Well, somebody had to “clear the way” for the ever-expanding US population as it headed west. So, what were these hard-toiling workers like, emotionally. What were their desires, and how did they carve out a life for themselves, and, eventually, their families? This new film, based on a recent celebrated literary work, tries to answer those questions as it focuses on one such man in the early part of the previous century. After several grueling hours of laying track, did he close his eyes, and drift away into a slumber filled with TRAIN DREAMS?

That laborer at the heart of this story is Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), who relates his humble beginnings as a young orphan arriving via train to Idaho in the late 19th century. Most of his early memories revolve around the railroad and the surrounding forests. He sees Chinese immigrant rail workers being driven out of town, and even gives a water-filled boot to a dying man near the bottom of a ravine. In his teenage years, he hops on to a locomotive that takes him far away from his adopted family, to Washington state. After a long stint as a logger, he settles in a small town and meets a lovely young woman at a church function. Robert and Gladys (Felicity Jones) begin a romance that culminates in marriage. They build a home near a stream on the edge of the woods far from their village. Robert is happy, but he’s haunted by dreams of an incident in which he failed to intervene in an attack on a Chinese co-worker. Soon the couple welcome a daughter, Kate. But Robert soon leaves once more, to work on the railway expansion hundreds of miles away. He keeps to himself, but befriends a colorful old explosives excavator named Arn (William H. Macy). When that job is completed, Robert rushes back to his cabin for a happy reunion. Sadly, fate has other plans. He must decide whether to drift from job to job or try to put down roots near the site of his great, heartbreaking loss.

In the lead role, Edgerton must make Robert compelling without reciting much dialogue. And he certainly succeeds, making his tired eyes a window into the stoic man’s soul. We can almost share his aches and pains as Robert toils to make a better life for his family. This gives an extra emotional wallop as Edgerton conveys his joy (falling in love, playing with Kate) to his sorrow (that tragedy and the horror of the work camps). Many of the most powerful moments are the scenes shared with Jones, whose Gladys is the bright, shining light in Robert’s dreary drudgery. It’s surprising to see her as the main catalyst to the relationship, catching him “off guard”. Jones’ beaming gaze at him informs us of her passion for the new life she has begun as wife and mother. Another terrific actress, Kerry Condon, also brightens Robert’s life as a new-found friend who begins a job at a nearby forest preserve. Their interplay is quite engaging, as she describes her own love of the solitude of nature. As is the case in his superb supporting work, Macy makes the most of his scant screen time as the lazy bur lovable “blaster” who makes Robert the “sounding board” for his philosophy, while generating laughs as he tinkers with faulty equipment (“Stand back, boy…aw, c’mon now!”).

With his sophomore feature, director Clint Bentley carefully crafts a somber saga of early American life in the West. He also co-wrote the screenplay adaptation of the Denis Johnson novella with Greg Kwedar, which eschews showy histrionics in order for Robert to tell his own story of love, loss, and regret. There’s a dream-like quality to the early scenes of young Robert collecting lifelong memories that will shape his later years. Adding to the dreamscape of the title, Bentley presents images and sequences that could be fantasy or fact, as Robert deals with his own fractured history. All this is enhanced by the rich, luminous cinematography of Adolpho Veloso (tough to go wrong with that lush scenery). For those film fans in need of a quiet, contemplative respite from the usual “rapid_fire”, bombastic movie fare, TRAIN DREAMS is cinema serenity.

3 Out of 4

TRAIN DREAMS streams exclusively on Netflix beginning on November 21, 2025