Train Dreams: A Meditative Masterpiece About Small Lives and Big Landscapes

Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, fresh off their Oscar nomination for "Sing Sing," have created something genuinely transcendent with Train Dreams. Based on Denis Johnson's novella, this is a film that dares to make poetry from the life of a railroad logger in the early 1900s, and succeeds in ways that will leave you breathless. Netflix snatched this up immediately, and for once, they got it right.

Joel Edgerton gives the performance of his career as Robert Grainier, a man whose face could belong to any century, carrying the weight of loss with a dignity that never asks for pity. The film follows his life in fragments – meeting his wife Gladys (Felicity Jones, bringing essential warmth), losing her and their daughter in a fire, continuing to work the rails and forests as America transforms around him. It's a simple story told with the complexity it deserves.

Bentley's direction channels Terrence Malick without becoming derivative. There's a moment where a tree falls, and the camera holds on the dust particles dancing in the sunlight, finding beauty in destruction. Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso turns the Pacific Northwest into a cathedral of green and gold, while Bryce Dessner's score does emotional heavy lifting without manipulation.

What sets this apart from typical period pieces is its refusal to romanticize or condemn the past. These men built America by destroying it, cutting down ancient forests to lay tracks for progress. The film holds both truths simultaneously. William H. Macy appears for a wonderful supporting turn, delivering a monologue about tree rings that might be the film's thesis: the dead have as much to give as the living.

At 95 minutes, it still drags slightly in the second half, and the narration occasionally becomes too literary for its own good. But these are minor complaints about a major achievement. When Kerry Condon appears late in the film and says, "The world's an old place," you feel the weight of every year.

This is cinema that makes you reconsider what stories are worth telling. In focusing on one unremarkable life, Bentley and Kwedar have created something universal about work, loss, and the terrible beauty of existing in a world that will forget you.