One of the big break-out success stories of Sundance 2025, so far, is “Train Dreams,”. The 102-minute film based on Denis Johnson’s novella. Director Clint Bentley premiered the film on January 26th at the Library Center Theatre in Park City. It has since been snapped up by Netflix for a figure said to be “in the high teen millions.” Only Dave Franco and Allison Brie’s horror film “Together,” bought by WME Independent, has created more buzz around a Sundance purchase.
Production and Theme
Black Bear Productions, founded in 2011 by Teddy Schwarzman, is behind “Train Dreams.” Schwarzman’s previous work includes 2014’s “The Imitation Game.” Director Clint Bentley’s film explores the era of logging and railroad expansion in the American West. The film’s historical setting adds another layer to the narrative. The theme of railroad development in America resonated with me personally, as my Norwegian immigrant grandfather, Ole Monson, helped build the B&O Railroad (before his early death from Tuberculosis). The B&O, established in 1830, operated until 1997. (My mother, his daughter, was born in 1907).
RAILROADS IN AMERICA
The theme of the establishment of the railroads in the U.S. attracted me to this film since my Norwegian immigrant grandfather (Ole Monson) helped lay the B&O Railroad (before dying young of Tuberculosis). The B&O Railroad, the oldest of them all, began in 1830 and continued until 1997. [For perspective, my mother (his daughter) was born in 1907.]
The National Book Award-winning “Train Dreams” is described this way: “Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders—this extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.”
The Train Dreams CAST
I was familiar with cast members Joel Edgerton, William H. Macy, Felicity Jones, Clifton Collins, Jr., and narrator Will Patton. Add to that that the director co-wrote and produced “Sing Sing” for A24 and won a 2021 Sundance U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Best Actor and this became a “must-see” Sundance film, for me.
Screenwriters (Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar) have adapted the poetic language of the novella. The film opens with these words: “There were once passageways to the old way. Even though that has been rolled up like a scroll and put somewhere, you can still feel the echo of it.”
The Story of Robert Grainer
Clint Bentley, director of Train Dreams, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Clint Bentley.
“Train Dreams” tells the story of Robert Grainer, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century. He’s an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal trauma and the radical changes that transformed America. My grandfather, Ole Monson, eventually quit working on the railroad to work in his brother’s dry goods store in the small town of Hospers, Iowa, but I always was fascinated by the story of his assimilation into the culture of America as he left Bergen, Norway, for the dream of a life in the United States of America. He was dead before I was born, so I never got to hear, firsthand, his adventures in coming to America and working on the railroad, but I have always been fascinated by the stories of others in the family.
A Life of Labor and Loss
Robert Grainier in “Train Dreams” is a logger who works for $4 a day. He travels to where the forests are and is gone from his home for extended periods, as a result. Grainier is portrayed by Joel Edgerton (“Loving”). He is a bit of an enigma, as he lost his original family and watched Chinese families being mass deported from his original home town. Robert quit attending school in his early teens. His life really starts in a new direction when he meets Gladys at church.
Within three months the couple are inseparable and build a cabin on an acre of wooded land. Soon, they have a daughter, Kate. But Robert is constantly leaving their cabin to work alongside men from Shanghai and Chattanooga in the forests. In the summer of 1917 he worked for the Spokane International Railroad and witnessed racism against Chinese laborers. They were sometimes summarily executed without any obvious legitimate cause. This is something which haunted Robert for the rest of his life.
Encounters and Tragedy
In the course of his work as a logger, Robert met many characters, including one played by William H. Macy who used explosives to fell trees—sometimes successfully. In another incident, a Black man crashes into camp. The man demands to know the whereabouts of a man named Sam Loving from New Mexico. When one of the loggers makes a break for it (apparently because he IS Sam Loving) he ends up dead, shot in the back. Incidents like these make up the narrative. In between his logging adventures, Robert returns to his family in the small cabin in the woods and to his beloved wife Gladys and daughter Kate. Robert says, “He began to feel a dread, like some punishment was seeking him.”
The Fire and its Aftermath
Ultimately, when he returns to his small cabin in the woods, there has been a terrible fire, reminiscent of the recent Los Angeles fires. His cabin and his family are gone. For two weeks he searches for Gladys and Kate. The acting in the scenes where Edgerton is mourning his lost family and sleeping outside, exposed to the elements, is Oscar caliber. The cinematography of the area (Adolpho Veloso) is gorgeous.
Robert held out some faint hope that Gladys and Kate might still be alive and come home, so he lived on speckled trout during the summer and began rebuilding the cabin. As the novella said, “He wandered the city as though he were looking for something he had lost, out of time and space. He kept waiting for his wife and daughter to return.”
Themes of Loss and Racism
Aside from the logging adventures (later, he takes a job helping move people via buckboard) the main theme is that Robert spends what is left of his life mourning his lost family. The film also comments on racism in America, which made it a fine companion piece to the Sundance documentary “Third Act” that I watched, which referenced discrimination against Japanese Americans and the interment of Japanese Americans during WWII.
CONCLUSION
Near the end of his years of waiting for his family, Robert is shown attending a film in a theater. He sees his face in a mirror for the first time in a decade. Like many of us, Robert says, “He felt that he was just only beginning to have some faint understanding of his life, even though it was now slipping away from him.”
The film was the most impressive I’ve seen, so far, of the feature films at Sundance. The visual effects of the fire, top-notch acting from all, coupled with great vistas, special effects, and good sound all contributed to a superior film that is also a history lesson, which I will connect to the Grandfather I never knew in life who helped launch this country’s oldest railroad.
