Riding the Rails with “Train Dreams”

Among the ten movies nominated by the Academy for Best Picture, there were a few that were unfamiliar to me. To be honest, I hadn’t kept up with some of the year’s best foreign-language films, like Brazil’s The Secret Agent. Nor did I feel much inclination to check out the Oscar-nominated racing flick known as F1. Though it didn’t, of course, get named Best Picture, it did take home a statuette for its true-to-life sound design. As I write this in my home office, I’m hearing plenty of souped-up cars racing past my window. Why on earth would I want to go to a movie and listen to more of that screeching and rumbling?

 On the Best Picture top-ten list, there was one small American art film that I did feel obliged to view. A popular Oscar preview broadcast is hosted each year by my favorite L.A. public radio station, LAist. Shortly before the Oscar ceremony, the station’s critics annually gather to weigh in on the candidates in all the top categories, after which the audience applauds for its favorites. To my surprise, a little movie called Train Dreams got a big reaction from the crowd, as well as from the critics. Some of the latter actually called it the most memorable movie of 2025. So I absolutely needed to see what the excitement was about.

 Train Dreams started out as a 2011 novella by the acclaimed Denis Johnson. Though Johnson, the son of a U.S. State Department operative, grew up all over the globe, this book represents a rich slice of Americana. It focuses on the quiet but eventful life of Robert Grainier, an orphan who first rides a train in 1893 when (at age 7) he’s sent to meet his adoptive family in Fry, Idaho, As he grows up in these rustic surroundings, he remains directionless until he meets a young woman named Gladys. They marry, build a log cabin by the side of a river, and welcome a young daughter they name Kate.

 Though Grainier yearns to live at home with his growing family, his best source of income is  helping to build the Spokane International Railway. Camping out with his co-workers, he meets kind and gentle men, but also bigots who torture their Chinese immigrant co-workers and inflict vengeance on outsiders. Grainier also takes in the natural beauty of the forest, as well as the danger always lurking in the background as men fell giant trees and handle explosives. When he decides to return home for good, he learns that disaster has stricken his loved ones in his absence. That’s pretty much the whole story, which follows Grainier up until his death in 1968, Toward the end of his life, he watches on television John Glenn’s foray into outer space, and sees the earth spread out below him from his seat in a biplane. A narrator solemnly tells us that during this ride into the heavens, "as he misplaced all sense of up and down, he felt, at last, connected to it all."

 It’s a beautifully shot movie that certainly earns its four Oscar nominations, especially the one for cinematography. It’s also slow and solemn, and definitely an acquired taste. For me the biggest surprise is that three of the four main actors—Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones as his wife, and Kerry Condon as a forestry service worker with her own sorrows—turn out to be born and raised overseas. Only William H. Macy, playing a wise old coot, is  actually American-born. Surely there’s a good reason why Americans aren’t playing Americans. Any thoughts?

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