From Novella to Oscar Contender: Train Dreams Review

 

 

Unfortunately, it passed me by when it initially came out. It is an overall good thing that it’s on Netflix, as that makes it easily accessible, but when a movie is so easily accessible, there’s a solid chance it’ll end up eternally sitting on my watchlist. There’s a long list of acclaimed movies on Netflix that have just sat there waiting to be watched, because I’m so adept at putting them off for a later date. The reason I’ve finally got around to it now is because of the Oscars. As a self-respecting cinephile/film buff/any other self-aggrandising term I’d like to use, I feel obligated to keep up with the Oscars, so whenever they come around, I find myself binging all the films with big nominations that I missed when they originally came out. Train Dreams is nominated for four awards in total: Best Original Song, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography and the biggest award of the night, Best Picture. As would be expected for a movie with all these nominations, Train Dreams is, to put it succinctly, great.

 

 

Honestly, it’s sort of a difficult movie to write about, especially without spoiling parts of it, because it doesn’t really follow any sort of traditional narrative structure. It’s more of a vibey mood piece, focused on building atmosphere rather than conveying plot. It’s purposefully slow and made up of a lot of beautiful images of nature. It’s no shocker that it was nominated for Best Cinematography, as it’s easily my favourite looking movie of last year. It’s clear that so much thought and care have been put into composing every shot here, and the unique aspect ratio of 1.50:1, along with the general stillness of the camera, makes the film almost feel like looking through an incredibly well put together photo album. Pretty much every shot here looks good enough to hang up in your house, although it might be a bit awkward to explain to any guest why you have so many pictures of Joel Edgerton up. If I had to really fish for a complaint here, you could argue it perhaps owes a bit too much to the films of Terrence Malick, but I think it has enough of its own personality that it never bothered me.

 

In keeping with its atypicality, aside from Robert Grainier, there isn’t really a set cast of characters here. Instead, characters flow in and out of his life, and while this risks leaving them feeling underdeveloped, it actually works really well. Every character feels so lived-in and real, as if they’ve gone through whole lives off-screen, despite their limited screentime. It certainly helps that they’re played by wonderful actors like William H Macy and Kerry Condon, who know how to make the most of their scenes. The only exception is, unfortunately, Grainier’s wife, Gladys, played by Felicity Jones. It’s a shame, really, since Jones is a good actor, and aside from Grainier himself, Gladys is the most important character here, and fumbling her character really hurts the emotional core of the film.

 

That being said, the brunt of the movie rests on the character of Robert Grainier. Grainier himself comes across fairly simple on the surface. Very traditionally stoic, not much of a talker and a mostly passive presence, but he’s wracked with guilt, sadness and a general feeling of out of place in a fast-evolving world. This gives an interesting challenge to Joel Edgerton, as he has to try to communicate the inner workings of a character who isn’t really written to show his feelings. It’s a type of character that works perfectly in a book, as the omniscience of that format can give you access to every thought a character has. But they can often come across quite bland on screen, when you don’t have that sort of insight. The movie works to bridge the gap by presenting the visuals and sounds through a more subjective lens, with the camera seeing and hearing things entirely from his perspective, along with narration that pops up every now and then, but the job still mostly falls to Edgerton. I’ll be honest, out of everyone here, it’s him who I’m most unfamiliar with, so I didn’t know what to expect, but he’s genuinely phenomenal here. So low-key, but he’s able to say so much with just a glance. The grief that follows Grainier throughout the film is almost always visible on Edgerton’s face. He perfectly embodies this type of person, where you can feel all the life they’ve lived just by looking at their eyes, but they’ll never outwardly show it. It’s a type of person I feel like I’ve met loads of times in my life.

 

Like I said at the beginning, Train Dreams is difficult to describe and may be slightly difficult to get into. Pretty much the exact type of movie about which someone would complain “nothing happens”, but if you try to meet it on its level, and allow yourself to get enveloped in its atmosphere, there’s a lot to love here. It’s a type of sustained experience you can only really get from a movie. It’s almost ironic that it didn’t get a wide cinema release, because it’s perfectly suited to watch in a dark room on a massive screen. Unfortunately, it probably won’t win any of the Oscars it’s nominated for, but it’s still well worth a watch anyway.