There is an image that persists throughout Clint Bentley’s “Train Dreams” of a pair of boots nailed to the trunk of a tree, slowly becoming consumed by the ever-expanding bark. We later learn the boots were owned by a logger killed by a felled tree run rogue down a steep embankment. The tree, methodically and without malice, is eating away at the leather soles once worn by a now dead man; melding the natural and the perverse into one symbiotic manifestation of modern life. It is a bastardization of nature and a reclamation of it, an acknowledgement of past sins and the infinite, a symbol of the passive forgiveness that living things whose existence stretches back into the dawn of man are unendingly capable of. That there may be grace offered along the winding tracks of unending time, even for a species whose savagery has rendered the whole of our home planet and country nearly uninhabitable, is a blessing we are certainly unworthy of yet gifted anyway. Time is both a towering oak tree growing tall and strong as much as it is a foul-mouthed man ripping it from the ground with cold steel and capitalistic glee; two sides of the same cosmic coin whose face is unreadable from our diminutive vantage point here on the ground. That kind of understanding is the stuff of stars, celestial and blameless in their perpetual cycling and rebirth. “Train Dreams” seeks to grasp that starlight in its hands and reckon with its power, its mystery, and its tragedy through the life of one man, a man who believes himself cursed by existence for his inaction to stop a single unspeakable cruelty and damned by creation to suffer for it.
“Train Dreams” follows Robert Gainier (Joel Edgerton), a simple man living a lonely life among the swaying trees of Idaho. Abandoned as a boy, he is not even sure of his own age as he works the massive lumber operations that excavated wide gashes of devastation through the forests of the late nineteenth century. America is on the move, and it needs to fuel its grand, glorious penetration into virgin land. Robert meets a woman, Gladys (Felicity Jones), who brings a spark of life into his solemn days; a capable and eager woman for whom there is an easy equality, a partnership of love and hope for a future. They build a cabin and soon have a baby, but work is scarce, and Robert is a lumberman, so each season he ventures back into the forest again to spend his days sawing away the ageless giants of endless time for a few dollars pay. A kind and generous man, Robert is eager to meet fellow workers from places as foreign as “Shanghai or Chattanooga”. Many of his co-workers are Chinese, and while language separates them, the work brings a shared camaraderie and some much-needed companionship. That is, until one day, while working a railroad job, Robert watches, confused, as the Chinese man he had moments before been sawing lumber with is snatched by a gaggle of armed white men and tossed over the side of a bridge to die. Robert is shaken by this, unsure what the man could have done to deserve that fate, and yet his protestations are paltry, passive, and ultimately useless. Returning home to his wife and rapidly aging daughter, Robert begins to dream of that day, of that murdered man, and a train that seems to be barreling its way straight for him on a collision course. He expects a comeuppance for his cowardice, senses a looming specter just beyond his field of vision, ready to snatch him away at the opportune moment. He is not quite wrong, though the manner in which death comes for him is the same way it comes for everyone gifted a long life, nibbling at us like a crow might a not-quite-dead roadkill lying fetid on the highway and cruelly leaving us enough hope to imagine a life free from the inevitable suffering to come. Whether as recompense for his lack of action or simply because of how the waves of the world crash against our best laid plans, Robert is left to witness eighty years slowly crawl around and over him, his presence as little more than a time traveler watching existence rumble past without having the good sense to buy a ticket.
This is a sad, sweet film; lush in its Malick-style photography and interpretive in its ultimate meaning. Based on the novella by Denis Johnson, the screenplay by Bentley and Greg Kwedar owes as much of its somber charm to the lead performance of Edgerton as it does to the narration of Will Patton. A performer who always makes any production better for his presence, Patton’s soft intonations regarding the broiling life behind Robert’s soft eyes and his place amid a chaotic universe lend the film a sense of eternity and calm, the comfort of a beloved grandfather spinning bedtime stories from beyond the grave. The film’s tone reminds one of the Coen Brothers’ “True Grit”, another literary adaptation of frontier life, whose narration is poetry in its truth and simplicity. “Time just gets away from us”, says the elder Mattie Ross with finality in the closing moments of that film; a statement spoken as if intended to lead onto some grander idea, and yet unable to continue for reasons beyond our understanding. “Train Dreams” feels like that, a thought cut short from its full reckoning, an Odyssean saga of a man for whom life offers no grand adventures but a daily struggle to return to the land where he is loved; a journey impassable except for the dead. As the years go on, those he loves begin to die for reasons that would be easy to shrug off as coincidence or the hazards of frontier living. But Robert knows better. He senses the weight of his guilt growing plump with each soul it consumes, and yet he is now allowed to fall victim to despair. Through the care of his friends and the affection of a wild dog who joins him in his lowest moments, Robert finds a path beyond the petty ravages wallowing in his rearview and keeps living one day at a time; a fate worse than death for his sins, yet one we all know too well. As an older man, now little more than a rusted axe in a chainsaw world, we see Robert visit town and see John Glenn on a TV screen alongside images of Earth from orbit. Later, he is coerced into viewing a freak show with the promise of seeing a “monster”. What he finds instead is a young boy with fur pasted to his face, snarling on stage for an audience of half-amused patrons. Robert sees this and weeps as he confronts the prospect that the monsters raging among the inner folds of his subconscious are merely humans in disguise, or maybe even those of his own creation. Who’s to say?
“Train Dreams” is a film that certainly has no sure answers, but if we’re honest, does anyone? That is the business of the stars, for whom our small lives are merely a glimmer in an ocean of fathomless time; a prospect as daunting as it is comforting. Perhaps it’s best not to think about it, for that way lies madness. All the same, there is truth in the idea that inaction in the face of violence and hate is a damnable offense worthy of whatever ravaging our souls might inflict. The locomotion of history may not inevitably roll toward equity, but it certainly steams along a fog-banked future whose destination our choices day by day determine.
Choose love and enjoy the ride.
You’ll be glad you did.
“Train Dreams” is playing on Netflix.
