Netflix’s ‘Train Dreams’ captures the beauty of an ordinary life

Robert Grainier cast his eyes on the comet soaring in the starry night sky. Its light pierced the darkness as the early 20th-century logger looked up from the ground below.

“A great comet appeared in the sky, which many said signaled the end of days,” a voiceover describes the scene that appears in a new film called “Train Dreams.” “But after two weeks, it faded away as quietly as it had come.”

Like a comet, “Train Dreams” presents the ordinary, little life of its protagonist as quiet, quick, easy to miss, and yet extraordinary. Based on a novella with the same name by Denis Johnson, “Train Dreams” follows Grainier (Joel Edgerton), a taciturn logger and railroad worker in the Pacific Northwest, as he experiences love and loss.

Along the way, the drama envelops viewers in visually stunning cinematography and explores the universal questions that probe the human heart about the meaning of life and the reality of mortality.

Available for streaming on Netflix, the PG-13 film is narrated by Will Patton and also stars Felicity Jones, Nathaniel Arcand, Clifton Collins Jr., John Diehl, Paul Schneider, Kerry Condon and William H. Macy. Ahead of its release, the filmmakers spoke with OSV News about their work.

A meaningful life

While many movies tend to focus on characters that accomplish remarkable feats or exhibit superhuman powers, “Train Dreams” revels in the extraordinary in ordinary life.

Clint Bentley, the director and a writer of the screenplay, said he felt drawn to take a little life that would “barely even make it in the local newspaper when the person died” and “show the depth and the beauty of that life in a way to hopefully, by the end, give the audience space to reflect on their own lives — and the fact that most of us will, by the end of this thing that we’re doing here, pass out of the world and, by the time that people know us pass away, will be forgotten.”

“What makes life meaningful and special is not whatever we left behind necessarily,” Bentley said. “It’s the moments that we had with the people around us and whatever love that we put in the world that can echo through the world.”

While the film runs less than two hours, it embraces a slow, purposeful pace that invites viewers to wait with Grainier for a grand revelation about his life. Along the way, he gathers pieces of wisdom from those around him.

“Beautiful, ain’t it?” his friend, Arn Peeples (Macy), asks him at one point while they sit in the middle of a towering evergreen forest. As the birds chirp and the sun lowers in the sky, Grainier quietly prompts, “What is, Arn?” Arn responds, “All of it. Every bit of it.”

At another point, a character named Claire Thompson (Condon), tells Grainier, “The little insects you can’t even see, they play a role as vital as the river. … The world needs a hermit in the woods as much as a preacher in the pulpit.”

‘The small things are the big things’

Bentley encountered the novella when it was published in 2011 and fell in love with it, he said. He later introduced it to Greg Kwedar, who wrote the screenplay with Bentley.

“I hadn’t read any of Dennis Johnson’s work until Clint handed me the book and was like, ‘Is this a movie?'” Kwedar said, adding that they often run ideas by each other. The pair have worked on several films together, including “Sing Sing” in 2023 and “Jockey” in 2021.

Kwedar said he loves that the novella has been described as an epic and a miniature. He sought to understand what that meant.

“It’s hard not to be taken by the splendor of the natural world that is portrayed in the movie and the ambition of the mechanization of the world that was once natural,” he said of the film. “Yet, I think its power is in its intimacy and how the small things are the big things.”

“In the span of a life, it begs what’s worth paying attention to,” he added. “That’s part of the power of the film.”

‘The one that’s here’

Both Bentley and Kwedar shared their favorite lines from the story. Kwedar’s favorite line only appears in the novella. The moment comes toward the end, when Grainier cares for a girl he believes could be his daughter. He tends to her wounds and stays by her side as she recovers.

“In the novella, he says, ‘I’m not a doctor, I’m just the one that’s here,'” Kwedar shared his favorite line by Grainier. While the line isn’t in the film, “the film conveys it in its totality.”

“I think there’s some great lesson in that of how we can show up for people, even though we may not have the right tools,” Kwedar said. “The act of showing up is the value.”

Bentley had a couple of favorite lines from the film, including one that was added later on in the filmmaking process. It comes when Grainier is spending time with his wife and baby in between traveling for work.

“There’s a line we put in the (voiceover) that says, ‘He didn’t know it then, but he would always look back on these years as the happiest of his life,'” Bentley said.

He wanted to place the line in the film to remind not only himself but also others about the beauty of the present, he said.

“We’re always looking ahead, to, ‘Oh, I’m going to do this, I’m going to get a new house, or I’m going to get a new job where I’m going to get a promotion at work,'” he said. “But you’re living through what might be your happiest times in your life — right in this moment.”

As “Train Dreams” follows the entirety of Grainier’s life, Grainier remembers those happiest years throughout his life. He remembers them until, as the voiceover describes, “his life ended as quietly as it had begun.”

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