Train Dreams

There’s a strain of American pastoral cinema which found a patron saint in Terrence Malick and talismans in the solemn reveries of Badlands and Days of Heaven. Train Dreams belongs to this church, and it’s a thing of beauty. Based on the novella by Denis Johnson and set in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of the last century, the film stars Joel Edgerton as Robert Grenier, a lumberjack returning to the logging camps season after season, to his own surprise picking up a wife along the way (Felicity Jones), but finding also hardship and tragedy as the railroads stretch out and the country grows old (or maybe it’s just the face in the mirror).

Director Clint Bentley (Jockey) has made a subtle, ruminative film about the passing of the years, the fleeting encounters and foundational relationships that mark a character and eventually constitute a life. With an evocative score by Bryce Dessner of The National and a long string of sharp cameos, the movie builds up an unexpected emotional pull, and Cascadia has rarely looked so luminous on screen.

Soulful… At the risk of gushing, I adored this perfectly formed movie. It elevates Bentley into the league of essential American filmmakers.

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

A Western epic of breathtaking visual splendor and formidable lyrical cinematic poetry, it’s a work containing all the wondrous, devastating layers of an entire life, which it explores with a gentle grace without hiding from the agony that comes with it.

Chase Hutchinson, The Wrap

A staggering work of art.

Nilge Eberi, New York magazine