OSCARS 2026: Train Dreams (2025)

Ah, is there any prize in the literary world more treasured than the Pulitzer? I mean, probably. But is there any literary prize with more name recognition than the Pulitzer? The Newbery Medal might be close but I’m going to say “no.” No Pulitzer for Fiction was not awarded in 2012, presumably on account of the world ending, but among the nominees was Denis Johnson’s novella “Train Dreams.” Being able to slap “Almost won a Pulitzer” on the cover of your book surely improved Johnson’s sales. Now, more than a decade later, the prestige film adaptation of Johnson’s work has arrived. After being nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for “Sing Sing,” Clint Bentley has both written and directed the cinematic “Train Dreams.” It has also caught the Academy’s attention, earning nods for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, and Original Song in this year’s line-up. 

In the early years of the 20th century, Robert Grainier arrives in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. He grows up into a quiet, average man. In time, he meets a woman named Gladys, believing he’s finally found his purpose in life with her. They marry, build a cabin, and have a daughter named Kate. Robert is often away from Gladys and Kate for long stretches of time, at his job clearing the forest for the in-coming railway lines. He meets many interesting and odd men in this time, including the observant eccentric Arn Peeples, and witnesses the changing tide of history. Like when a Chinese rail worker is thrown from a bridge by racist coworkers, an incident that haunts Robert. After the end of the economic boom period of World War I, Robert and Gladys attempt to restart before a wild fire destroys the cabin and seemingly takes the man’s wife and daughter from him. He persists in the woods, often living as a hermit, wrestling with his ever-present grief and continuing to watch the natural world and the changing society around it.

Bentley – whose work also includes an overlooked indie drama about the decadent and depraved lifestyles of jockeys – has sighted Terrence Malick as an influence on “Train Dreams.” Which is about as obvious a connection as can be noted. Much like Malick’s most well known work, “Train Dreams” is a quiet story about observing human life amid a vast and beautiful but pitiless natural world. The sprawling woods of Idaho in the early 1900s is made of towering trees that seemingly stretch on in all direction. Robert and his family, friends, and co-workers often appear as small figures amid these colossuses. Sometimes, a random tree limb falling from above or some other accident will take a man’s life. Because work must always continue, nothing but a quick burial, a short sermon, and a pair of boots nailed to a tree can follow. While the natural world is seemingly indifferent to the lives of those who come and go from this place, small signs of their existence remain. Such as Robert’s memories of them. This depicts “Train Dreams’” quiet but hard-to-resist insistence on one of the great contradictions of being but a frail mortal human. Our little lives do not matter, in the massive stretch of history, and yet they are also somehow the most important things to exist. 

I honestly think “Train Dreams” invokes this idea a little better than the last few Malick movies I’ve seen. Primarily because it never forgets the little insignificant bug at the center of the story, who contains a universe within. “Train Dreams’” story stretches on for a period of eighty years, tracking its protagonist’s entire life. You wouldn’t expect a hermit living out in the woods to have much of a perspective on history. Despite that, “Train Dreams” does quietly track the way industrial development completely altered human life. After the death of his wife and daughter, Robert attempts to return to logging, only to see that rougher men with chainsaws have taken over the job. During the climatic montage, he observes an airplane, a movie theater, and a televised report on the man going into outer space. A key line has one of Robert’s elders, the kind of role he ages into in time, point out that the logging industry will eventually run out of trees to cut down if they keep up at this pace. Others dismiss this observation but it is, of course, inevitably true. 

Robert’s position as a simple man in a rapidly changing time gives him perspectives on other things too. Early on in the film, he recalls the incident of a Chinese worker being seemingly murdered by a group of his coworkers. (In the book, he participates in this act, making his guilt over it much more understandable.) This is a symptom of the anti-Asian sentiment common in the decades after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Robert doesn’t even know if the man who was probably killed was Chinese exactly. During his time in the woods, he also sees a fellow logger shot to death by a black man, avenging the murder of his brother but the same white worker. All of this seems to suggest that racism was still very much a part of the American landscape despite all the technological progress being made during this time. A potent and sad fact about this country. 

While you can argue about how important or thoughtful any of the things “Train Dreams” is doing exactly are, I was wrapped up in the film for possibly a far more shallow reason. There’s something very irresistibly cozy about this motion picture. Robert’s life is one full of hardship and sorrow, especially once those he loves are taken from him. However, those years with Gladys and Kate are joyous ones, of peaceful understanding that only comes around once in a life time. Later, Robert adopts a stray wolf-dog that wanders into his cabin. There is something to be said for the experience of being a forest hermit, hanging out in the middle of nowhere with your love or your dogs. “Train Dreams” goes out of its way to make this as absorbing an experience as possible. Adolpho Veloso’s cinematography is gorgeous, sweeping and large and also as intimate and candle-lit as the material demands. Will Patton’s quiet narration, some of which taken directly from the page, lulls you into a peaceful state of mind. Joel Edgerton’s performance is one of interiority, a man who holds his stormy emotions within. And, hey, here’s William H. Macy as a folksy, wisdom spewing logger who wanders into the story briefly. Excellent use of Mr. Macy. 

In fact, “Train Dreams” had me asking some interesting questions about myself. Such as what I would have ended up doing if I was alive during this point in time. Maybe I liked the movie so much primarily because I saw something of myself in Robert Grainier, an unassuming fella with a lot of thoughts in his head. If born into the same time and place as him, I suspect I would have ended up as a naturalist too, cataloging all the different types of mushrooms or caterpillars or some such thing within the woods. That’s the kind of thing a dork like me would’ve done before computers or comic books were invented. Anyway, I liked this one. Needed more of the wolf man imagery from the book, of howling in defiance against the shadows consuming everything, which is weirdly sidelined for the most part. It remains an expertly made film that worms its way into your mind. [8/10]