In an industry often dominated by superhero spectacles and high-concept franchises, the journey of Train Dreams to the screen stands as a testament to perseverance. The film, a quietly powerful tale of a stoic lumberjack in early 1900s Idaho, faced an uphill battle for acceptance, with studio bosses repeatedly passing on what they deemed a beautiful but uncommercial project.
The Uphill Battle for a Spiritual Western
Actor Joel Edgerton, who stars as the central figure Robert Grainier, admits the pitch was a hard sell. "You go into the meeting and say: 'Well, it's a movie about a guy who's not really making choices for himself. He's kind of pushed around by life,'" Edgerton recounts. Director Clint Bentley agrees, noting the character's lack of traditional heroism and the film's subtle supernatural elements. "It's a spiritual movie," adds Edgerton. "You have to be patient."
Bentley play-acts the typical studio response: "It sounds beautiful. It sounds lovely. We'll pass." Despite this trepidation, the team persisted, creating a film that is now garnering rave reviews and is tipped as a dark horse Oscar contender.
Personal Connections and the Weight of Fatherhood
Based on Denis Johnson's 2011 novella, Train Dreams follows Grainier, an itinerant logger dwarfed by the vast forests of the Pacific north-west, whose work takes him further from his wife and infant daughter. This theme of absence resonated deeply with both its stars and its creator.
For Edgerton, rereading the novella after becoming a father himself gave the material new, profound meaning. "I don't have the tragedy of Robert inside me, but I've imagined it," he reveals. "As soon as you become a father you imagine it and it's terrifying." He shared a personal moment from the lead-up to the birth of his twins, where he feared they might not survive, leaving a permanent "pit in my stomach."
For Bentley, the film is a continuation of the themes he explored in his previous work, Jockey. Both films examine men separated from their families, a dynamic Bentley lived firsthand. His father was a journeyman jockey, and Bentley himself now balances filmmaking with a family based in Texas. "I love being with my family," he says, "But I love being on the road. If I didn't have a family, I'd be happy living in Motel 6s for the rest of my life."
This classic cowboy vacillation—the yearning for home versus the call of the wild—is central to the film. Bentley even experienced a moment of profound connection with his late father while on set, brushing his teeth in a motel room and suddenly understanding the man's solitary life on the road.
The Power of Silence and Human-Made Art
Edgerton delivers a magnificently tight-lipped performance as Grainier, a role he connects to his earlier work in Loving, where the director instructed him to be "less understandable." This focus on the nonverbal, he believes, demands a different kind of acting discipline.
He also emphasises the importance of communication between actor and director, critiquing a Hollywood culture where sometimes "the director figures, 'It's not my place to tell you what to do.'" For Edgerton, the director must always be "the head of the household."
Now enjoying the film's critical success, the conversation turns to legacy. The film itself is a meditation on impermanence, with Grainier's hand-hewn wooden bridges inevitably replaced by steel. In an age of AI-generated content, Edgerton sees the tangible, human effort behind Train Dreams as its most precious quality.
"This was a movie shot by real people in the woods. The aliveness of it all – the realness of it all – is preserved," he states. He hopes that, like bespoke boot-making or vinyl, audiences will always value human-made things, even as he speculates that "one day we'll see the last analogue movie."
For now, Train Dreams stands as a rugged, poignant, and entirely human achievement, a reverie designed to envelop its audience in the quiet tragedy of a life lived in the shadows of giants.
