‘Train Dreams’: Sundance Review

Dir: Clint Bentley. US. 2025. 102mins

A portrait of a Job-like individual navigating the depths of his unexpressed sorrow and isolation, Train Dreams boasts a beautifully elegiac tone that conveys the profound emotions its main character cannot fully bring himself to feel. Joel Edgerton plays an everyman US logger and railroad worker in the early 20th century, the actor making quiet decency seem almost heroic. With obvious debts to Terrence Malick and bygone epic cinema about the vanishing American frontier, Jockey director Clint Bentley sculpts a sentimental story whose gentle ironies and modest design have a cumulative power.

Rich and poignant

This Sundance premiere should have no problem attracting buyers, who will court adult audiences craving a mature, tear-jerking drama. Bentley, whose Jockey played at Park City in 2021, recently earned a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination alongside his longtime creative partner Greg Kwedar for Sing Sing, so his stature among indie crowds should continue to rise. And the cast of Train Dreams, which includes Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon and William H. Macy, will only further attract viewer interest.

Based on Denis Johnson’s novella and lovingly narrated by Will Patton — who also provided narration for the audiobook — Train Dreams introduces us to Robert (Edgerton), a soft-spoken orphan who grew up not knowing his parents or even the date of his birthday. Working as a logger helping to clear a path through the thick woods in and around Idaho for forthcoming railroads at the beginning of the 20th century, he lives an itinerant life until he meets Gladys (Jones), a strong-willed local beauty. In no time, they marry and have a child, although Robert often must leave his family for weeks at a time to earn a living, the distance apart starting to take its toll.

Arthouse viewers will be able to spot the cinematic reference points for Train Dreams, with Bentley’s decidedly classical filmmaking style consciously recalling Malick’s sun-draped scenes of besotted lovers and Michael Cimino’s sweeping period piece Heaven’s Gate. Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso depicts the untamed American Northwest as a fecund forested wilderness, its endless bounty of towering trees a temporary Eden. Bryce Dessner’s lilting score, full of banjo, ukulele and strings, has the impact of a sustained sigh, lamenting the film’s solitary, closed-off protagonist as well as the beautiful natural world he adores.

Edgerton often portrays stoic individuals, but Robert represents something richer and more poignant — a man who observes more than engages, in some ways a bystander in his own life. Patton’s narration elucidates the character’s thoughts, but the restrained text rarely feels expositional. Instead, Train Dreams holds a tension between the emotions Robert keeps at bay and the insights Patton’s words provide. Throughout, Edgerton’s haunted eyes hint at the pain underneath that rugged exterior.

To explain precisely what pain Robert is concealing would risk spoiling some of the film’s most affecting twists. But from early on in Train Dreams, when Robert learns what can happen to the Chinese immigrants who work alongside him building America’s railroads, this man will experience a series of hard truths about racism, loss, guilt and the cruel passage of time. Bentley, who co-wrote the screenplay with Kwedar, views Robert as someone living during a crucial period in American history — a seemingly anonymous nobody left behind by industrialisation. Train Dreams can occasionally become too maudlin, treating Robert like a saintly innocent, but Edgerton’s commitment to portraying this logger with gravitas helps push against those attempts to beatify the character.

Jones brings some grit to her role as Gladys, Robert’s true love who also risks being idealised by the filmmakers. The actress works hard to elevate the character beyond being just a simplistic image of pure wifely grace. Macy shines as an eccentric older logger, his fear that the American wilderness will disappear connecting to Robert’s deep-seated worries that this gruelling work will eventually be the end of him. (As we will discover, logging casualties are not uncommon.) And in a brief but affecting appearance, Condon plays an independent woman grappling with her own grief who crosses Robert’s path later in life, allowing him to open up in ways he never has before.

Spanning decades, Train Dreams has the maturity and hushed melancholy appropriate for a film that bids farewell to a specific time in America and also a specific kind of American frontiersman. That nostalgia is not always interrogated as sharply as one might hope, but it’s hard to argue with a drama so confidently constructed and so persuasively performed. With immense affection, Bentley pays tribute to one taciturn individual lost to history, his voice finally allowed to be heard.