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). 

Magnolia

MAGNOLIA              A                    

USA  (188 mi)  1999  d:  Paul Thomas Anderson

I have a feeling, one of those gut feelings, that I’ll make pretty good movies the rest of my life.  And maybe I’ll make some clunkers, maybe I’ll make some winners, but I guess the way that I really feel is that Magnolia is, for better or worse, the best movie I’ll ever make.   

—Paul Thomas Anderson

Among the more intensely personal films out there, contemplative, ambitious, while often feeling exhilarating, taken for a wild ride on an out-of-control locomotive carrying a heavy weight that at any time can be catapulted in your direction, like an accident waiting to happen.  Much is made of a jarring prologue about long odds, asking what are the chances for strange and bizarre events to occur, that no one would believe, yet inevitably they do happen all the time, as life defies the odds.  Showing a penchant for camera movement and a constantly changing editing scheme, the film is literally a choreography of shifting emotions, like being caught up in a wave cycle that repeats endlessly, with viewers riding wave after wave of emotions.  The explosive nature of these feelings, literally gushing from an open hydrant, is emphasized throughout, with occasional moments that simply soar with dramatic power.  Arguably the best of all Anderson films, largely due to the dazzling operatic fashion in which the entirety of his ideas are displayed, tapping into life and death issues, especially pain, longing, guilt, regret, and forgiveness, with redemption being the operative word, which this film expresses with grace and style.  Easily the most Altmanesque Anderson film, where the ensemble concept drives the narrative, with a mosaic of multiple stories overlapping into other stories, all careening towards similar ends, leaving an audience thoroughly satiated afterwards, as this is a gloriously unapologetic cinema manifesto, with an unflinching style of bravura filmmaking that is fiercely original and simply not matched elsewhere, filled with detailed side trips that border on the bizarre, yet all contribute to the whole.  One of the more amazing films to initially experience, with viewers blown away by the ingenuity, yet the breathtaking style is equally matched by a complexity of thought and depth of dramatic content, making this one of the more challenging films on record, as it can feel overwhelming to process afterwards, driven by desperation, movingly melodramatic, like being hit by a tidal wave or a freight train of emotion.  Any film that leaves viewers with seemingly unfathomable ideas that need to be figured out afterwards is always a good thing, as that means the film evolves long after the audience has left the theater.  This gestation period is remarkable, as it initially happened in an era before the popularity of smartphones and the Internet, so you had to figure things out the old-fashioned way, through curiosity and personal exploration, asking yourself what it all means.  What was certain, however, right from the start, was the cinematic mastery on display, as even if individual little pieces felt odd, overlong, or didn’t fit, the overall delight in experiencing the surprises this film offers is unforgettable, as there are few others like it.

Among the guiding principles of the film is that there is no clear-cut protagonist, in the manner of Altman’s Nashville (1975) or Short Cuts (1993), where instead there is a whirlwind of moving parts or subplots, with no fewer than ten characters all collectively feeding into the overall vision, fueled by loners or outcasts who are among the loneliest people on the planet, immediately emphasized when a myriad of characters are introduced in song by Aimee Mann, former vocalist of ‘Til Tuesday, whose fragile songs of vulnerability and pain contribute to Anderson’s dramatic conception, featured throughout the film, Aimee Mann ONE - YouTube (2:54).

One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever know

One is the loneliest number

One is the loneliest number

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do

One is the loneliest number, much much worse than two

One is the number divided by two

Jumping back and forth between Earl Partridge (Jason Robards in his final role), a bedridden misanthropic elderly man dying of cancer, Linda (Julianne Moore), his shrill and neurotic trophy wife, drug-riddled, in a state of hysteria throughout, the essence of high strung and high maintenance (incredulously nominated for Best Supporting Actress, though she’s the only one who consistently overacts), Phil (Philip Seymour Hoffman, a revelation in the role, understated throughout, arguably the best thing in the film), his kind and patiently caring male nurse, Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall), a veteran game show host who discovers he’s dying of cancer, Claudia (Melora Walters), his estranged drug-addicted daughter who uses men and cocaine to numb the pain, Stanley (Jeremy Blackman), a lonely child prodigy and long-running contestant featured on his quiz show, exploited and browbeaten by his overbearing father (Michael Bowen), Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), former child quiz show sensation who was hit by lightning and survived, but lost his smarts, whose own parents stole all his earnings, Officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly), a goodhearted cop looking to make a difference, and Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise, easily his best role, nominated for Best Supporting Actor), a bombastic and misogynistic television huckster and long-lost son of Earl, certainly one of the established themes is that the sins of the fathers will be forced upon their children, providing a roller coaster ride of conflicting emotions and unending drama.  The characters run the gamut of wide-ranging, human emotions, often captured in despicable moments of their life, with the film shining a light on what they’d prefer was kept hidden, creating an uncomfortable awkwardness throughout, yet the beauty of the film rests upon the decision of nearly every character to try to do better, to struggle with their abysmal failures, at times feeling like a demolition derby of contrasting emotions, each crashing into one another, creating a chain reaction, leaving behind a series of failed efforts in the scrap heap.  In a world numb to their efforts, that seemingly doesn’t care, viewers have a decidedly different vantage point, an insider’s view, as we’re privy to these intimate moments, sharing the pain and anguish with each character, knowing they wish it was different. 

One of the strengths of this director is his devoted empathy for the characters, as if each represents an autobiographical stage in his own life, representing something precious and significant.  More than any other Anderson film, the audience sympathizes as well, perhaps due to the mysterious strangeness of how these circuitously intertwined lives are presented, where we’re along for the journey, taking note at each new development.  It’s rare to find such an enormously bighearted cop, as he’s ostracized by his fellow officers as being too soft, yet he has an agenda, suggesting “As we move through life, we should try to do good.”  While we’re witness to the self-destructive behavior of Claudia, snorting coke nonstop, prone to dangerous mood swings and a built-up anger, refusing to even speak to her father, kicking him out of the apartment when he announces his illness, screaming at him to leave, wanting to be rid of him, the police officer sees none of that, instead knocking on her door investigating a disturbance in the building, with music turned up to peak volume, shattering everyone’s last nerve.  Once he gets her to quiet down, he takes a more personal interest, sympathizing with a troubled woman living alone, finding her attractive, so lonely himself that he actually asks her out on a date.  What are the chances of this happening?  Before the night is done he loses his gun in the bushes observing a crime in action, a humiliating moment that requires the attention of dozens of other cops searching for his gun, only to later appear out of nowhere.   While there’s no rational explanation for the appearance of the gun, nonetheless it does.  All of this is part of a narrative chain reaction that continually reoccurs with each of the characters, seemingly with no rhyme or reason, yet strange things keep happening.  Perhaps the most outlandish moments occur with Frank, a self-professed alpha-male decked out in black leather who teaches a “Seduce and Destroy” seminar whose singular message is “Respect the cock and tame the cunt,” repeated to howling applause from his worshipping followers.  His mantra of male supremacy is a hoot, “full of sound and fury,” his colossal arrogance appalling, yet we are transfixed by the sheer cultish drama he orchestrates wielding enormous power that literally jumps off the screen.  In complete contrast, we have the innocence of Stanley, a child lugging more bags of books than he can carry, spending hours at the library surrounded by them all, scouring each for more specific information to learn.  Yet when it’s time for the quiz show, he reports a need to go to the bathroom, which falls on deaf ears, as the show is about to begin, where the kid is a walking encyclopedia, filled with knowledge on literally every subject.  Simultaneously, Jimmy Gator is suffering from the effects of his sickness, losing all clarity, including his eyesight, unable to recall what he just said, with his mind wandering, going into a fog, all exposed on live television, causing panic and alarm from the technical crew.  During a brief break, when Stanley again announces a need to pee, his request is rudely denied, informed he needs to hold it, where his normally active buzzer goes silent for an entire segment, with the other kids taking advantage of him, forcing him to answer every single question, with viewers caught up in his excruciating personal torment, as time literally stops, seemingly forever, where the exposed vulnerability of this mistreated child is simply enormous, with Stanley eventually peeing on himself in front of the cameras, with his angry Dad going bonkers in the waiting room, thinking only of the lost money his son won’t generate.      

Continually crosscutting from one story to another, giving all characters equal time, viewers are constantly injected with new blood, experiencing an increasingly elevated dynamic of new drama, maintaining a surprising level of intensity for a three-hour film.  Donnie Smith, however, may be the saddest and most pathetic character in the film, a washed-up former quiz show whiz kid that is now a failed electronic salesman recently fired from his job, denounced as a failure, where he can’t explain why he’s getting braces at his ripe old age, or how he can afford it, ending up at a bar where the handsome young bartender is wearing braces.  In a strange game, one customer (Henry Gibson) is luring the bartender with dollar bills, taking his focus away from Donnie, who’s also trying to get his attention, eventually having a seat next to his rival, where he’s like death warmed over in terms of his dismal outlook, telling the entire bar he was hit by lightning, doomed ever since as his brain was scrambled, leaving him sad and stupid, actually blurting out his declaration of love for the bartender, a rare moment of devastation and open humiliation that also falls on deaf ears, left to reflect on the consequences of his miserable life.  It’s only in the latter part of the film that we learn of the connection of Earl and Frank, and it comes in a surprising moment of lucidity for Earl, with Phil tenderly at his bedside engaging him, as Earl is otherwise unconscious through most of the film.  But for one moment, he reflects upon what a selfish lout he’s been, recalling his first marriage, his first real love, Frank’s mother, confessing how badly he mistreated her, fooling around with other women, even abandoning her when she got sick with cancer, forcing Frank to take care of her when he was barely a teenager, and now he’s dying alone, filled with guilt and regret, excoriating himself for all his stupid mistakes.  Phil hears all this, as well as his plea to find Frank, before he lapses back into unconsciousness.  Heroically, he attempts to get through the telephone hotlines promoting Frank’s self-help tapes, finding someone who can put him in touch with Frank, which is a Herculean effort, happening simultaneous to a cringeworthy TV interview that methodically strips away the repressed details of his personal life, but eventually, after refusing to recognize him, Frank arrives at the door, angrily denouncing his father in a spontaneous rage, calling him everything in the book, refusing to show an ounce of remorse before he too breaks down, succumbing to the moment, perhaps even blaming the old man for getting out of it too easily, as he’s a shell of his former self.  Afterwards, with Phil tearfully administering a high dosage pain-relieving morphine medication that will likely never allow Earl to regain consciousness, the remarkable happens, again fueled by an Aimee Mann song,  Magnolia - "Wise Up" scene - YouTube (4:37), with characters breaking into song, including Earl, a truly spectacular scene of enormous transcendent power, probably the defining moment of the film, where the memory of this scene is indelibly imprinted into the collective viewers’ subconscious.  Meanwhile, Donnie devises a devious plan of robbery, stealing money for the braces he doesn’t really need, but thinks it will romantically link him to the bartender, a hair-brained scheme that even he gives up on, changing his mind in midstream, but gets locked out trying to return the money, climbing a gutter to get back in, where he’s spotted by a cruising Officer Jim.  With that moral dilemma in play, perhaps questioning the balance of the universe, the film is not afraid to explore the supernatural, where a downpour of rainfall subsides, only to be followed by what amounts to an apocalyptical event of Biblical proportions, something you read about but never experience, as frogs literally fall from the sky, by the hundreds and thousands, like a plague of locusts, where we see Stanley finally telling his father, “Dad, you need to be nicer to me,” with Stanley, perhaps the only one not freaked out by the experience, seen joyously watching the frogs projected against the library wall, muttering, “This is something that happens,” suggesting the unpredictable really does happen, with one of the descending frogs hitting Donnie, knocking him to the ground where he smashes his teeth, perhaps now actually needing braces for repair, finally rescued by a friendly officer on the scene, who is seen afterwards paying a visit to Claudia, previously viewed as an open wound, but now, somehow different, leaving the film open ended and more optimistic, a collective trauma veering towards forgiveness, shown in a final shot, Save Me from Magnolia - YouTube (4:20).