Train Dreams

“Train Dreams is a beautiful film, but it leans into tropes we’ve seen a million times before.”

Title: Train Dreams (2025)
Director: Clint Bentley 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Clint Bentley 👨🏼🇺🇸 and Greg Kwedar 👨🏼🇺🇸 based on the novella by Denis Johnson 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Gavin 👨🏼🇬🇧🌈♿

—MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 4/5

Fans of Terrence Malick’s poetic, spiritual filmmaking will rejoice in watching Train Dreams. Based on the novella by Denis Johnson, this adaptation depicts the American Frontier in glorious golden hour light whilst wallowing in slow-paced drama. A faithful retelling, the film follows the story of labourer Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) as he goes through life’s joys and pains in the early 20th century.

Director Clint Bentley reteams with writer Greg Kewdar after gifting the world the terrific Sing Sing (2023). That film showed the power of art through a small-scale, intimate character drama. In Train Dreams, Bentley and Kewdar stick with their character work, but swap claustrophobic prison cells for epic, woodsy expanses to highlight the beauty of the world. Robert is a man of few words as he strives to spend time with his wife, Gladys (Felicity Jones), and their young daughter, in between seasons of working on the railroad. Edgerton delivers an astonishing performance, conveying all of Robert’s pent-up feelings with subtle expressions in moments of happiness and deep sadness.

Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso recently picked up a Film Independent Spirit Award for his work on Train Dreams, and watching the film, you understand why. The 3:2 aspect ratio serves not only to enhance the grandeur of the setting but also to evoke nostalgia for the period. Veloso shot the film almost exclusively in natural light, making lush green forests pop off the screen, and an ashen wasteland after a wildfire feel devastating. Unfortunately, this latter section of the story leans into melodrama and grief porn as Robert faces one challenge after another. But the bittersweet ending will still affect the coldest of hearts.

Gender: 3/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE

Early on in Train Dreams, Robert meets Gladys. After a couple of scenes showing their growing relationship, we jump to them as a married couple, building a family in their idyllic log cabin home. All Gladys wants is to be with her husband and child—a tall order when Robert spends months away for work. Being a lone parent for extended periods, Gladys is a capable woman who’s seen building and using her own wooden fish trap. At the same time, she’s an endearingly playful mother.

Similar to Gladys is Claire (Kerry Condon), who we meet much later in the film. As a fire lookout for the government, Claire is independent—she treks through the forest alone after her carriage arrives late—and has a great appreciation for the natural world. Giving Robert sage advice, Claire isn’t just intelligent, but emotionally intelligent, too.

Yet the women of Train Dreams are here to serve the leading man’s narrative. At first, Robert’s goal is to be with his wife and daughter. After a forest fire consumes their home, and Robert loses track of his family, Gladys becomes another victim of the Dead Wife trope, her oblivion a mere turning point for Robert’s journey. As for Claire, she gets only two scenes, and her dialogue and interaction with Robert are also used to advance his arc. Sure, Gladys and Claire are well-rounded characters, but the film doesn’t let them shine.

Race: 2/5

Non-white characters are treated similarly. On the one hand, it’s positive to see characters of colour included in an early 1900s Pacific Northwest story, as well as during a brief but deliberate scene in the 1960s. People of colour existed, of course—about 1 in 35 Washington residents were non-white in 1910, mostly Japanese and Native American. On the other hand, the film’s characters of color receive even less development than Gladys or Claire.

Most notably, Robert briefly works with a Chinese railroad worker, Fu Sheng (Alfred Hsing). In a shocking moment of violence, Fu is thrown off a bridge to his death by a group of white men as Robert fails to intervene. Fu then haunts Robert, wordlessly appearing in dreams and visions.

Fu has no backstory, no character traits. His only line of dialogue is a plea for help as he is dragged towards his death. When Robert envisions Fu, he appears as a wordless, expressionless spectre—a symbol rather than a human being. The kicker is that Fu never appears again after Gladys and her daughter go missing. Robert, and the film, forget about him. There are other nameless Chinese immigrants in the background of shots, but only when Bentley and Kewdar want to give them attention. Most of the time, Robert is seen working and interacting with white Americans, even though Chinese labourers had an outsized presence in building the country’s railroads.

In another supporting role, Ignatius Jack (Plains Cree actor Nathaniel Arcand) is an Indigenous shopkeeper who provides Robert with a bit of work and friendship. Unlike Fu, Jack has a handful of scenes that show his empathy and humour, but we don’t get any background information or a deeper sense of this person. Jack’s only involvement in the story is to provide for Robert physically and emotionally. Finally, a minor Black character, Elijah Brown (Brandon Lindsay), has minimal but powerful screen time, exacting rightful revenge on a white labourer. Like the film’s other characters of colour, he makes an impression with what little the actors have to work with.

Mediaversity Grade: C 3.00/5

Train Dreams is a beautiful film, but Bentley and Kewdar lean into tropes we’ve seen a million times before. The script reduces women to disposable plot points, while people of colour exist as symbols, not humans. The filmmakers have proven with Sing Sing that they can tell compelling, inclusive stories, which makes Train Dreams all the more disappointing.

Like Train Dreams? Try these other titles resplendent with golden-hour lighting.

Grade: CLiFebruary 28, 2026