Train Dreams (2025)

Paraphrasing one of my family members, nothing much happens in this movie but it is beautiful to watch. It is nominated in several categories for the 2026 Oscars, including Best Picture (no chance) and Best Cinematography (also no chance I think, but it has a way better shot at it because the film is gorgeous to watch in a lush outdoor kind of way). This is a film of echoes--across years, across place and across time. It generation-spanning, which means that there is a lot of change afoot and so as one gets older, one feels left behind, from a time and place that no longer exitsts. It takes place in the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century, and life & death intertwine in the duality of the symbol of the train, something that represents both progress and destruction. The railroad tracks that expanded their way across the United States in the 20th century both made the world smaller by connecting people and altered the landscape by cutting down trees that had been there for centuries to do so. Working from a novella by Denis Johnson, the film telsl a story of an ordinary life in an extraordinary way, a man who believed his existence was shackled by guilt and trauma. A birth-to-death character study, it is a meditation on the beauty of everyone and everything, how we are connected to both the earth and those who walked it before us. Joel Edgerton does a remarkable job playing Robert Grainier, a stoic man who marvels at the changing landscape in his work as a train laborer, someone who cuts down trees, pounds tracks into the ground, and even helps build bridges, often away from home for months at a time. Much of his story is told via a narrator, whose voice is something both soothing and powerful at the same time. It has A River Runs Through It vibe. He speaks for the often-silent Robert, telling us about formative encounters on the job, including a key moment when a Chinese immigrant was murdered. Robert considers for the rest of his life if his inaction at that moment led to the tragedies that would befall him. Though it is set about 100 years ago it is barely recognizable, and in the subtext drives home the fact that violence and racism are embedded into the fabric of the country and what is happening in 2026 America is a slippage back to that time and place.