Train Dreams

At first glance, the protagonist of Train Dreams isn’t typically the type of character whose life story is turned into a movie. He’s an ordinary man who’s usually not memorable enough to be forgotten.

Yet he becomes the compelling emotional anchor of this modest but quietly powerful period drama from director Clint Bentley (Jockey) that tells a century-old tale of kindness, humanity, fulfillment, hard work, the American Dream, and the hidden costs of progress.

The setting is the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900s, when Robert (Joel Edgerton) works seasonal jobs in the heavily forested terrain, usually building railroads and bridges through the region. He gets personal satisfaction from a job that’s otherwise underpaid and underappreciated.

Orphaned as a child, Robert is soft-spoken and unassuming, a decent guy with a solid moral compass whose biggest regret is saying goodbye to his wife (Felicity Jones) and young daughter every year at the start of logging season.

The film balances the grueling physical and emotional toll of his career with the quirky absurdities in Robert’s interactions — people such as a wise and opinionated Midwesterner (William H. Macy) who’s still working into his senior years, and a fire ranger (Kerry Condon) who becomes a confidant.

In a profession where tragedy and grief are inevitable, Robert remains driven by hope amid the despair.

The elegiac film — with extensive yarn-spinning narration by Will Patton — appreciates the understated and often unheralded dignity of their labor, and the harsh and unforgiving conditions they must endure just to survive.

The deliberately paced screenplay by Bentley and Greg Kwedar (Sing Sing), adapted from a Denis Johnson novel, unspools almost like a tall tale or a campfire legend. Even when the narrative momentum wavers, it doesn’t resort to heavy-handed sentimentality.

Bentley’s camera captures a vivid sense of time and place, maximizing the use of its lush visual backdrops. As a result, the film feels intimate given the vast nature of the changing world it depicts.

Ultimately, Train Dreams has little to do with the actual railroad as it chugs along. Instead, through Robert’s eyes, it celebrates the strangers we meet, the experiences we share, and the virtues to which we should all aspire.

Rated PG-13, 102 minutes.