Train Dreams

Director Clint Bentley

director on the set with Joel Edgerton

novelist Denis Johnson

TRAIN DREAMS      B                                                                                                           USA  (102 mi)  2025  d: Clint Bentley

There were once passageways to the old world; strange trails, hidden paths.  You’d turn a corner and suddenly find yourself face-to-face with the great mystery, the foundation of all things.  And even though that old world is gone now, even though it’s been rolled up like a scroll and put somewhere, you can still feel the echo of it.                                                             —opening narration (Will Patton)

Adapted from a 108-page novella by Denis Johnson, initially appearing in The Paris Review in 2002 before published on its own in 2011, one of three works of fiction nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2012, along with David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King and Karen Russell’s Swamplandia, but in a controversial decision no book was awarded the prize that year, the first time in 35 years.  His 1986 novel was also the source material for the Claire Denis film Stars at Noon (2022), which won the Grand Prix at Cannes, another film about isolation and existentialism.  Set in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the 20th century with the building of the transcontinental railroads, forest loggers met with railroad men to tame the American West, falling trees in abundance, literally carving out sides of mountains to make way for the coming future, opening up pockets of America’s Western frontier to expansion in a bid to interconnect the country, much like the interstate highway system did for cars in the 1950’s.  Using a blurred effect that reads like “a waking dream,” much as he did in his earlier much-celebrated short story collection Jesus’ Son in 1992, using unsettling, dreamlike qualities to express a state of mind preoccupied by deeper, metaphysical accounts of the changing world around them, with the film using lengthy voiceover narration passages, which many compare to the pervasive transcendental style of Terrence Malick, especially 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #1 The Tree of Life, as it moves from realism into the metaphysical and back, navigating a line between truth and the American frontier myth.  Deeply contemplative, this is like an early David Gordon Green movie, George Washington (2000) or All the Real Girls (2003), the kind of thing nobody makes anymore (including Green), like an ancient relic, or a lone tree dwarfed by the massive overgrowth of the surrounding woods, as it places the poetry of mood and atmosphere over any narrative coherence, with the natural beauty of the landscapes becoming a character of its own.  Co-written by Bentley and Greg Kwedar, beautifully shot almost entirely outdoors, by Brazilian cinematographer Adolpho Veloso, where the strength of the film is the natural surroundings in an elegiac portrait of Robert Grainier, Australian actor Joel Edgerton, from David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom (2010), Jeff Nichols’ Loving (2016), and Barry Jenkins’ 2021 #2 Film of the Year The Underground Railroad- made for TV (2021), who is a simple man living in the mountains of northern Idaho near the Canadian border, making his living as a logger before transitioning to working for the railroad.  Immediately we are introduced to unsettling racist and xenophobic elements of the American Dream, namely those who were deprived from participating, as relentless and unending violence eradicated many of the Chinese laborers in a form of a deeply disturbing ethnic cleansing, witnessing the mass deportation of a hundred or more Chinese families, while often violently killing these Asian laborers in plain sight of the others, accused of alleged crimes before subjecting them to mob justice.  Ghostly visions of one murdered man, Fu Sheng (Alfred Hsing), continually flashes in the head of Grainier, who “was baffled by the casualness of the violence,” whose guilt haunts him for the rest of his life, posing the question, “Do you think the bad things we do follow us in life?,” leading him to suspect that he is subject to some obscure curse that follows him through the rest of his days and haunts his dreams, like the recurrence of traumatic damage, a reminder of the perils that come with the forming of a new frontier, which is anything but civilized, as the killings go unpunished.  The film pulls back from the most unforgiving elements of the novella’s critique, where contemporary climate disasters are essentially coupled with the long histories of settler colonialism and racial violence that epitomizes the American frontier.  

In the beginning, Grainier grows close to a man named Arn Peeples (William H. Macy), an old logger full of stories and an explosives expert who befriends him, where he stands out by not saying much, as opposed to the other endlessly chatty workers who actually have even less to say.  They form a bond that is larger than a friendship, one built on mutual respect and admiration, but Arn succumbs to a falling tree branch that hits him in the head, a notorious forest widowmaker that immediately reminds them of the inherent dangers of working in the woods.  His death is marked by nailing his boots to the tree, a poetic tribute that only accentuates how easily things can go wrong working under such primitive conditions, yet that’s also one of the reason jobs are so plentiful, as the hazards can outweigh the benefits, so the work really only attracts single men unattached to families.  Grainier drifts from job to job until he meets Gladys (Felicity Jones, so effective in Brady Corbet’s 2025 Top Ten List #3 The Brutalist) one Sunday after church, falling immediately head-over-heels in love, and they marry shortly afterwards, building a small cabin in a remote acre of the wilderness along the banks of the Moyie River.  In a film with intense highs and extreme lows, suddenly all he wanted to do was share the rest of his life living in the woods with her, having a young daughter named Kate, but Grainier is a man of few words, defined by facial expressions and long silences, with loneliness etched into his face, offering sparse, yet precise dialogue, where the much more revealing voiceover narration is exquisitely read by actor Will Patton, who also provided narration for the audiobook, giving the film a literary quality, providing greater insight into what we are seeing, with a quiet, unobtrusive, and barely audible musical score written by The National’s Bryce Dessner.  An ode to a vanishing way of life, the film actually recounts 80-years of his life (living into the 1960’s), orphaned as a child, never knowing who his parents were, dropping out of school, wandering from place to place, seemingly directionless until he meets Gladys, and suddenly he has a purpose.  Yet in order to survive, he has to spend long periods of time away from home in order to earn an income, which comes at a cost, as they both feel the wearying effects of his absence, not to mention a child who barely knows her father.  So they hatch a plan to build a lumber mill, allowing him to work closer to home, but in order to finance the project he’s forced into one more logging excursion, which is cut short by apocalyptic visions of fire and smoke billowing into the sky, a raging forest fire literally seen for miles, where the damage swallows up his family and his home, as well as much of the surrounding landscape, all reduced to ashes, yet their loss gives his life meaning, as he refuses to let them go.  Staying on the charred grounds in the event they might happen to return, he remains lost and alone, literally a hermit in the woods, reminiscent of Robert Redford’s survivalist in Sydney Pollack’s JEREMIAH JOHNSON (1972).  In the tradition of 20th century American frontier fiction, like Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918), the novel is darker in tone, told out of order, with a more complicit protagonist who is definitely guilty, with a less than admirable character, refusing explanation at the end, while the film is more linear and ambiguously open-ended, turning the protagonist into an ordinary but exemplary everyman who is our silent witness to the transformation of America in the 20th century, softening the harsh tone to literally questioning the meaning of our existence rather than continually reeling from the devastation erupting all around us.

After such an impactful tragedy, the film leans even more heavily on its visual language, Visuals - Train Dreams (4K) YouTube (4:43), becoming a profound meditation on existence, on grief and loss, and on the great mystery of all things, with lengthy philosophical ruminations expressed through the existential narration.  Finding work transporting goods to and from the railroad, he develops a spiritual friendship with a local Indigenous merchant, Ignatius Jack (Nathaniel Arcand), seemingly his only friend left in the world when he’s down in the dumps, while also meeting another fiercely independent woman who is quite comfortable living alone, Claire (Kerry Condon, from Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, 2022), the first woman to work for the U.S. Forest Service, brought in to survey the aftermath of the devastating fire, living in an elevated fire lookout tower to have a better view of developing forest fires.  Her unique, otherworldly residence takes him by surprise, as does her openly friendly nature, where she seems to understand him better than others, perhaps because she’s had her own experience with death, having lost a husband to a long, protracted illness, Train Dreams | Joel Edgerton and Kerry Condon "Threaded ... YouTube (49 seconds).  Grainier has visions of his wife and daughter, continually walking through the woods where he thinks he can feel their spirits, being very quiet and careful, hoping not to drive them away.  One night he believes he has discovered an injured Kate, now grown up and covered in soot, with a broken leg, cleaning her up while tending to her wounds, but by morning she has disappeared without a trace.  A film about getting swept into the current of incomprehensible change, nature is not just a place of beauty and danger, but watching humans tap into its calm indifference represents a spirit of freedom, offering a poetic space of memory and dreams.  Somber and unromanticized, the language of dreams and reality are interwoven, all blending together, where it’s hard to separate one from the other, which adds a poetic feel to every frame of the film, with Edgerton underplaying every fiber of Grainier’s character, creating a minimalist effect, even though this is an expansive, historical film that weaves its way into the present.  The railroad becomes a symbol of man’s intrusion into nature, a transformation no one can stop, marking progress into modernity, but it too becomes outdated, as wooden bridges across deep river gorges, which were viewed at the time as marvels of engineering, are soon replaced by those made of concrete-and-steel, which is like watching an old world disappear, encapsulating a deep sense of melancholy, becoming not only an elegy for the American West, but a reminder that all our work will eventually become obsolete.  Near the end we see Grainier take a ride on a fixed-wing biplane, which encircles the surrounding forest, allowing him to inspect it from above, providing a unique vantage point, like a God’s-eye view, as events from his life flash through his mind as the plane loops through the air, a reminder that the world keeps changing around him.  In a rare visit to Spokane in 1962, he pauses by a TV screen in a storefront window and witnesses images of astronaut John Glenn in space, allowing him to contemplate his own mortality, while the narrator recounts that Robert died in his sleep in his cabin in November 1968, leaving no heirs, but that on that spring day in the plane, “as he misplaced all sense of up and down, he felt, at last, connected to it all,” Watch the Final Scene of 'Train Dreams' | Anatomy of a Scene YouTube (2:33). 

Stars at Noon

 

novelist Denis Johnson

Director Claire Denis

Denis accepting Grand Prix award at Cannes

Denis flanked by Joe Alwyn and Margaret Qualley

Margaret Qualley

Alwyn and Qualley

Denis with Alwyn and Qualley

STARS AT NOON                B                                                                                                    France  Panama  USA  (135 mi)  2022  ‘Scope  d: Claire Denis

Fuck is a good word.  Fuck is the property of the whole world.                                                  —Coyote (Alexis Quintero)

The films of Claire Denis have been surprisingly absent from the competition selections at the Cannes Film Festival, as after her first film Chocolat (1988) was selected, she waited 34 years before she was welcomed back again, with her films instead appearing in Un Certain Regard or Director’s Fortnight, or premiering in other festivals.  Perhaps correcting a lifelong oversight, this film was selected at Cannes and shared the Grand Prix (2nd place) award with Lukas Dhont’s Belgium film CLOSE (2022), a prestigious honor for what many are considering one of her weaker efforts, taking critics completely by surprise, inspiring a divisive critical reception, with many dismissing it as a misfire, barely screening at all in the United States before quickly moving to various screening platforms.  Artists like Denis often face a wall of critical rejection, always a little ahead of the curve, defying expectations and baffling viewers with the complexity of her work, but her films typically find renewed interest and gain a more positive critical reappraisal over time, where she is arguably the greatest female director who ever walked the planet.  You simply can’t go wrong watching any of her films.  A political thriller that doesn’t really care about politics or action, this is more of an observational commentary on the misadventures of an oddly misplaced couple adrift in a foreign territory they no longer recognize, offering surprisingly astute commentary on the effects of colonialism without ever politicizing the subject.  A French director shooting a film in a Spanish language country where the protagonists are speaking English may explain everything, as this is more of a state of mind film, exploring the interiority of the characters.  Viewed as a road trip to Hell, somewhat reminiscent of an earlier Denis film, White Material (2010), which was set amidst the turmoil of a civil war in a French colonial African country, this also accentuates the same lush, dreamy landscape, adding a love angle, becoming a heated romantic thriller of personal betrayal and political intrigue, something along the lines of Hitchcock’s NOTORIOUS (1946) or Peter Weir’s THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (1982), yet reminiscent of Nicholas Ray’s outlaws on the run movie, They Live By Night (1948).  Mysteriously set in Nicaragua on the eve of the heavily militarized Sandinista revolution in 1984, the film is updated into the pandemic-era present, masks included, representing an all-encompassing police state presence, with uniformed men carrying automatic weapons patrolling every corner, where a darkened sense of foreboding and violence are seen and felt everywhere.  Adapted from the 1986 novel by Denis Johnson, expressing a ruthlessly honest, stream-of-consciousness characterization about the failed and the desperate, whose portrait is seen at the end of the film, he is perhaps best known for his 1992 collection of short stories entitled Jesus’ Son, which was also turned into a very successful indie movie in 1999.  This feminist reappraisal, however, takes us into the bowels of an inferno, a spiritual allegory of hell on earth, a nightmarish bad dream evolving into a near hallucinogenic depiction of psychological dread and despair, yet from this ash heap of fear rises a most unexpected romance between two white foreigners, turning Godard’s über colorful outlaws on the run movie Pierrot le Fou (1965) on its ear, instead expressing a dangerous labyrinth of lies and conspiracies, featuring a depressing setting spent mostly in beds and bedrooms, moving from the comfort of an air-conditioned tourist hotel to small local motels to literally horribly run-down motels, mostly having sex and drinking their troubles away as they experience a world coming apart at the seams with seemingly no way out.  Since its independence in 1821, Nicaragua has had a troubled history, and two hundred years later Nicaraguans are still struggling to define their nation’s post-colonial identity, as the Marxist Sandinista rule of the 80’s was a decades-long attempt to liberate the small Central American country from both a repressive dictatorship and the corporate subjugation of Latin America from U.S. imperialism, leaving ordinary citizens caught in the middle.  The Sandinistas promised a wave of reforms, and had only been in power for a short time when a right-wing rebel group known as the Contras, encouraged and financed by the United States, emerged to challenge their power, part of the post-war communist Domino theory that plagued American foreign policy for decades until the Contra-wars of the 80’s took more than 40,000 lives, where names like Iran-Contra (The Real Story of the Iran-Contra Affair | by Gena Vazquez) and Dark Alliance (The Storm over "Dark Alliance" - The National Security Archive) recall a toxic mixture of drugs, cash, and arms.  The Sandinista government’s nationwide popularity was always questionable, but the Contra forces squandered many opportunities to gain support by engaging in brutal atrocities and human rights abuses of their own.  Ironically, Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandinistan Revolution, was the Presidential winner of that 1984 general election in Nicaragua, voted out of office in 1990, but is once again in power, having been re-elected President since 2007, basically dismantling all institutions of democracy.  Without identifying any specific political parties, the background of the film remains murky, with Denis intentionally avoiding any backstory or historical detail, instead providing a militarized landscape of fear, exposing a cesspool of power and corruption, as if wading into the end of Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) transported to South America, where a growing sense of evil and madness lurks everywhere. 

It was only after the death of Denis Johnson in 2017 that Denis felt a sense of urgency to make this film, something she had previously discussed with the author, yet for him it was a traumatic memory, making it difficult to relive the personal experience.  While the film is told through the eyes of an aspiring female journalist, it was Johnson who went to Managua in the midst of the Nicaraguan Revolution wanting to become a journalist, with the novel expressing the journey of his own failed dreams.  Vividly recreating that aura of disillusionment and self-deception through a rapturously lyrical cinematic vision of Claire Denis, adapted by Léa Mysius, Andrew Litvack, and the director, the film was shot in ‘Scope by Éric Gautier, primarily filmed in Panama in the fall of 2021.  Trish Johnson (Margaret Qualley), a woman in dire straits, becomes the central focus, arriving in the country as a bilingual Witness for Peace human rights observer but quickly finds herself at the mercy of a devalued black market currency, insisting she is a journalist, but is unable to find work, harshly rebuked by a travel magazine editor (John C. Reilly in a hilarious cameo appearance), as no one wants to pay for her gloomy war crimes articles about murders and disappeared persons, only to end up hanging around the upscale hotel bar of the Intercontinental Hotel in Managua, drinking herself into oblivion while picking up stray men for American dollars.  Languid and seductive, enlivened by a freewheeling, charismatic performance by Qualley, many of the film’s best early passages consist of little more than watching her walk the streets of Managua to a largely improvised jazz score by Tindersticks, perhaps a riff on Jeanne Moreau’s famous Paris-by-night scenes in Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) (1958), creating a moodily impressionistic and deeply sensory experience, with an opening jolt into an abruptly realistic sex scene where an army lieutenant (Nick Romano) views her as a prized possession, taking her whenever he likes, feeling more like rape, as she views a photograph of a young Che Guevara on the wall during sex to divert her attention, an objectification of exoticized men, and in return he provides some of life’s necessities, hardly a fair exchange, as he keeps her passport hostage as well, so she has no means of escape.  This establishes the savagery of her mindset, a down on her luck woman having to survive by her wits, able to surveil the landscape and take advantage of opportunities, stealing what she can, becoming a scavenger in a desolate wasteland that seems like the end of the world, where rampant fear and unending violence have taken a toll on an emotionally exhausted and economically starved society.  There’s nothing likeable about Trish or anyone else in this doomed world, at times appearing relentlessly naïve, feeling like an overly entitled American used to privilege, looking down on everyone around her, showing little empathy or respect, describing this as a “hopeless country,” ultimately running into a handsome and well-groomed Englishman at a bar named Daniel (Joe Alwyn), easily recognizable in his white suit, like a knight in shining armor, conveying a suave, James Bond style of coolness.  The music of Tindersticks sets the mood, Tindersticks - Hotel Bar (Stars at Noon OST) - YouTube (4:33), slipping back into his hotel room as much for the cooling relief from the sweltering heat as the money, with the camera exposing sensual close-ups of her face and naked body, eventually discovering Daniel is different, supposedly working as an oil consultant, yet she wonders why any rational business would send anyone into such an economically depraved part of the world, opening up questions about who he is and what he’s really doing, questions that remain unanswered, part of the fog of ambiguity that comes with living in such a neglected territory.  But her suspicions are aroused over the breakfast buffet, helping herself to heaping portions even after being ushered away as she’s not a paying guest, yet she recognizes an undercover Costa Rican cop (Danny Ramirez) meeting with Daniel, another Miami Vice style man in a white suite with designer shades pretending to be a friend and business associate, but she knows better, even after the overly smug Daniel refuses to believe her, convinced he’s in the clear.  Nonetheless, the cop follows them, just as she predicted, forcing them to take extreme measures to ditch him, taking refuge in her ratty motel room, suddenly feeling like giddy outlaws on the run, strangers in a strange land, where escape seems like the only sensible thing to do in this quagmire of discarded dreams, both seemingly helpless to navigate safe passage in this labyrinth of death.  

Among the more stunning critiques of the remnants of colonialism, expressing a steep decline in moral standards, the filmmaker creates a lurid depiction of eroticism, mutual lies, and vagueness, building a huge impressionistic tapestry with Qualley’s eyes, hands, and entire body, always up close, then through the streets of a city whose walls, full of graffiti, are blurred in tracking shots viewed through taxi windows.  Without realizing it, thoroughly distracted by an encroaching police threat, Daniel has been unceremoniously checked out of his hotel, taking his money, credit cards, and belongings, leaving him a narrowing window of available options, putting them both in the same precarious position.  Trish seeks help from a protective relationship with a vice-minister of tourism (Stephan Proaño), who has ensured she could live in peace in her hotel, but he cuts off all ties, claiming she’s gotten too dangerous, suddenly fearing for his own safety, having been threatened by police, no longer wanting to have anything to do with her, finding herself stuck in a filthy flophouse with no money or passport to fly back home.  She gets the same response when she tries black market remedies, as even they refuse to help her, while a man promising to sell them a car for their escape suddenly discovers his car go up in flames, creating an extravagant visualization of the surrounding chaos, an eerie landscape of deserted streets, filled only with military personnel, with burning flames seen alongside dead bodies shot and killed from routine traffic stops.  With the government, once again, postponing elections, on the brink of social and economic collapse, instilling fear and hopelessness in the population, it’s a unique environment for an erotic love story to develop, where one has to question everyone’s motives, especially the lead protagonists, as truth is a nonexistent commodity.  Both retreat to an underground bar, taking refuge from the storm, finding themselves alone in a deserted subterranean universe that seems to exist only for them, like a projected fever dream of inflamed senses, expressed in a Tindersticks trance-like, slow dance of heated passion, Stars at Noon by tindersticks - YouTube (3:38), taking their relationship to a new level, discovering love and disillusionment amidst the ruins of destruction.  There is something remarkable about the undefined nature of the situation, the cloudy threat, turned into murder and violence on the one hand, but at the same time the relationship feels amorphous, as they don’t fully trust each other, each apparently with different aims, probably lying to each other, yet they can’t help themselves, remaining inseparable, where she despairs and is full of tears when he seems to have disappeared, apparently overwhelmed by it all, only to act cool and confident when he turns up again.  With Trish initially displaying a playfully erotic nonchalance, featuring lots of nudity and some fiery sex, things get serious as the situation becomes more dangerous, turning into a timeless, feverishly erotic tropical adventure as they attempt to flee together for the southern border of Costa Rica.  An outlaw on the run saga turns into a staggering identity crisis with constantly shifting perspectives, evidence of the sensuality of Claire Denis films, as she doesn’t make action adventures, but explores the space between the action instead, existing in its own sensual rhythm of movement and grace.  This journey couldn’t be more deglamorized, atypical of a travel adventure, instead growing more fraught with danger at every turn, with Trish meeting an American who is no ordinary American, but a CIA man (Benny Safdie), taking inordinate interest in her traveling companion, suggesting he is working for the “other” side, pressuring her to give him up, to turn the tables, offering incentives, suggesting everything has a price, informing her “This country is kind of like a gambler’s paradise.  Everybody’s giving the odds a shake, whichever game they feel like playing.”  Trish finds him a grotesque throwback to the past when America treated Latin America as a banana republic, a position grounded in white supremacy and colonialism, leaving countries under the economic stranglehold of foreign-owned companies or industries, with the U.S. government continually meddling into the affairs of poor and politically unstable nations, dangling economic investment or reconstruction development projects as a means to wield influence, yet this stronghanded approach was primarily concerned with serving only U.S. interests.  As if walking into a dream, the couple gets deeper into the wilds of the jungle, turning into a James Conrad Heart of Darkness scenario, with smaller villages and fewer signs of civilization, revealing a ghostly detachment with reality fraying at the edges, reducing the dramatic intensity to a slow crawl, growing more and more inexpressible and incomprehensible, yet vaguely mystical and poetic, like the end of the road, a place where all hopes and dreams come to die, becoming more vividly dark and despairing, ending on a cloud of ambiguity and uncertainty.