Train Dreams

The reviews were good, and it received 4 Academy Award nominations, among other awards. It was streaming, so my husband sat beside me, and we watched Train Dreams, starring Joel Edgerton. It is touted as an extraordinary story of an unremarkable life. Really, though, is any life so ordinary when we examine it closely?

Edgerton plays Robert Grainier, a logger in Idaho, in the Pacific Northwest, where massive trees are taken for granted. The story takes place about 100 years ago, and he is trying to make a living for his family. The movie is based on a novella by Denis Johnson and is classified as a period piece. I was drawn to the movie’s beautiful visuals, and there were many.

Robert is orphaned and begins learning the logging trade. Many are injured by the dangerous work of cutting down enormous trees for the railroads that were being built. Robert meets Gladys (Felicity Jones), and they get married and live in their small home by a river with their daughter. Times are hard, and Robert needs to support them, so he goes off to find more logging work. The work requires long periods away from Gladys. He witnesses a Chinese worker thrown from a bridge. Why? The movie doesn’t explain it, but it was clear to me that the reason was the racist proclivities against hardworking Chinese. He saw other workers killed by falling trees, crushed underneath the giant trunks. When they buried someone, they marked the site by nailing their boots to a log or tree. This is not ordinary. It may have seemed just ordinary at the time (this is a fictional story), but I find the visual of boots nailed to a tree more than ordinary.

Robert eventually meets an old-timer, Arn Peeples, played by William H. Macy, who shares his wisdom with the younger Robert. Tragedy strikes when Arn is injured by a falling branch and later dies.

When Robert returns home, he and his wife decide to farm and try having their own lumber mill, so he can stop logging. First, he has to finish a logging season, and when he returns, their cabin is burned to the ground. Gladys and his daughter Kate are missing. He cannot find them and believes them dead. He rebuilds his house and hopes to return to logging, but everything is significantly different from before and feels too foreign.

Next, Robert works as a carriage driver for wealthy people. When not working, he walks around in the forest and is positive he can feel the spirits of his wife and daughter, which calms him. Later, he thinks a young woman he sees injured in the woods might be his daughter.

Train Dreams is a sad tale of an orphan boy who grew to adulthood in the logging industry, witnessing brutality and many deaths in logging accidents. He is never reunited with his family. The story is of Robert’s life, just a regular life of a man who is making a living in a difficult economy after World War I. The movie does have beautiful visuals and features wonderful conversations between Robert and Arn.

I sat on our couch, patiently waiting for more to come. It never did. The movie was slow-moving to us, with little action other than some nail-biting scenes involving logging accidents. The forest scenes are calming, and then comes the Chinese worker being thrown from a high railroad bridge to his death. Felicity Jones is sweet in her role as his wife, understanding and wise, but wishing they could do better and be together. Robert Grainier had a very hard life, with some joy, but more tragedy.

Near the end of the movie, Robert takes a ride in a biplane. He dies peacefully in his sleep, according to the movie’s narrator, leaving no heirs. Yet on his death day, he felt connected to everything. Essentially, the hard life he lived led to a soft ending where he finally found peace and connection.

All right, the movie ended. We both sighed. It did not feel like a few hours well spent. It felt like I should have chosen a different movie. Maybe the critics liked it and thought it so special because it was about one man’s life, a man who worked his way from childhood to death, just living day to day. Just like we all do.

               Copyright © 8/20/2026 by Andrea O. Corwin