There is nothing particularly grand about Robert Grainier’s existence in the world. The main character of “Train Dreams” is not a great thinker, artist or athlete. He doesn’t know who his parents are, or even exactly how old he is. He’s not particularly chatty, or passionate.
Robert Grainier is a man, portrayed by a bearded, contemplative Joel Edgerton, who seems to live life simply because it’s there. What other choice does he have?
Yet Clint Bentley’s adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novella, set at the beginning of the 20th century, gives this small life in the Idaho Panhandle a grand, soulful canvas. Robert might just be a logger and day laborer, cutting down trees for paycheck wherever the next job calls, but with a poetically minded narrator (Will Patton) and a cinematographer (Adolpho Veloso) with an eye for landscapes at magic hour, “Train Dreams” ( streaming Friday on Netflix ) makes his life quietly epic.
Bentley and cowriter Greg Kwedar choose to begin Robert’s story differently than Johnson, however, who opened with Robert’s complicity in the murder of a Chinese laborer — a bold and alarming way to introduce a character who is, essentially, a good man. This adaptation does include this incident, but later on, as though an audience might not be able to handle any contradictions or ambiguity. Perhaps they couldn’t.
Instead, Bentley opens on a different kind of casual violence, the image of railroad tracks through a human-made tunnel overlaid by Patton’s narrator saying: “There were once passageways to the Old World, strange trails, hidden paths.”
The great conflict in “Train Dreams” is change, in which an Old World is indifferently destroyed in the name of development and evolution. With every thousand-year-old tree chopped down to lay railway track, to build bigger buildings, we are, “Train Dreams” says, getting further away from standing “face to face with the great mystery, the foundation of all things.”
And thus you have people like Robert, instruments of progress who don’t quite understand their role in it, though they will suffer at its hands, ambling through life grasping for meaning and purpose. He finds something like that in the beautiful Gladys ( Felicity Jones ), who against all odds singles him out to approach, to love, to marry and to build a little life with on one acre of land. Their love is idealized and simple, all contentment and peace in their tiny cabin surrounded by nature, as their little family grows to three with the arrival of a daughter, Kate. “Train Dreams” owes a great debt to Terrence Malick and his disciples.
Bentley and Kwedar save the incident with the Chinese laborer (Alfred Hsing) until a ways through the film, where it becomes a more blatant omen of tragedy to come as Robert worries whether evil deeds come back to haunt. He also meets another worker on a job, Arn Peeples (a nearly unrecognizable William H. Macy) whose philosophical musings have an undercurrent of superstition and paranoia. This is work, Arn tells a group of mostly uninterested loggers, that is hard on the soul. On Robert’s next trip home he’s greeted, from the train, with the sight of billowing smoke from a raging wildfire.
With comfort and love comes the possibility of loss, after all, and Robert again has no choice but to continue on in quiet solitude. It’s an understated character and an understated performance, which can be a difficult thing to celebrate properly when more often than not acting accolades go to those doing the most. But Edgerton knows he’s just a small part of this milieu. Robert is mostly an observer of others, and he’s good at that. When the focus turns toward him, as Gladys boldly introduces herself for the first time, he can barely get out a coherent sentence.
“Train Dreams” might veer a little too close to sentimental at times, but perhaps that’s an intentional respite from the aching loss at its core. Bentley’s film is haunting and patient, a dreamlike journey through a world that was disappearing in real time and an ode to the beauty that’s remained.
“Train Dreams,” a Netflix release streaming Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “some violence and sexuality.” Running time: 102 minutes. Three stars out of four.
