{"id":174228,"date":"2025-12-04T06:23:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T06:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/174228\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T06:23:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T06:23:09","slug":"joel-edgerton-and-dp-adolpho-veloso-interview-on-train-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/174228\/","title":{"rendered":"Joel Edgerton and DP Adolpho Veloso Interview on ‘Train Dreams’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tClint Bentley\u2019s Train Dreams<\/a> is a quiet film \u2014 a meditative frontier portrait defined as much by its silences as by its sweeping Northwest landscapes and its attention to the everyday rhythms of a working man\u2019s life. For star Joel Edgerton<\/a> and cinematographer Adolpho Veloso, that quiet is where the truth of Denis Johnson\u2019s 2011 novella lived, where the dignity, terror, humor and memory of a man\u2019s journey reside.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt kind of shows the majesty of a regular life, in a way,\u201d says Edgerton of the film, which follows Robert Grainier, a logger living in the early 20th century, from early adulthood to his final years. \u201cWe\u2019re used to going to the cinema to watch the lives of characters that save the world. \u2026 This is a different kind of cinema experience. The majesty of ordinariness, I think, and \u2026 you know, the dignity in living, in life itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe adaptation had long resonated with Edgerton<\/a> \u2014 he originally tried to acquire the rights to Johnson\u2019s book to adapt and direct himself \u2014 but by the time Bentley approached him to star, the material struck with a new force. \u201cWhat changed for me was the fact that I\u2019d sort of in my life become like the central character,\u201d he says. \u201cI built a family with my wife, I had children that were very young, like the character in the movie. Now my biggest fear is the stuff that happens to Robert in the film.\u201d Had he made the film five or seven years earlier, he says, he would have needed to imagine those anxieties. Now \u201cthey were all stuff I could say that I had experience in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSet against classic Western iconography \u2014 loggers, railway bosses, migrant laborers, forests stretching to the horizon \u2014 Train Dreams<\/a> avoids the genre\u2019s familiar tropes. \u201cIt\u2019s not a Clint Eastwood-style Western,\u201d Edgerton says. \u201cIt\u2019s a Western about life itself and what it means to be here on this planet \u2026 the journey of a person\u2019s life through love and family and a tragedy and the regrowth, or the rebuilding and rejoining of the world after you\u2019ve been knocked to your knees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Veloso, the challenge was adapting Johnson\u2019s spare, poetic prose into images that felt intimate and literary without slipping into artifice. From the outset, he and Bentley rooted the film in the concept of memory. \u201cWe wanted to make the movie look like you\u2019re going through someone\u2019s memories,\u201d he says. \u201cLike you found that box full of pictures, and then you try to put those pictures together, and they\u2019re out of order \u2026 but it\u2019s like pictures of someone\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat idea inspired the choice of a 3:2 aspect ratio. \u201cIt\u2019s an aspect ratio you find in older pictures, or even your pictures on your phone nowadays,\u201d says Veloso. \u201cWhenever you\u2019re going through your old albums, this is the aspect ratio you find, so it just felt right [to represent memories]. It also helped a lot with the trees and nature, because it\u2019s a taller aspect ratio.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t(L-R) Felicity Jones as Gladys and Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier in Train Dreams.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

\n\tFilming took place entirely on location in and around Spokane, Washington \u2014 the landscape Johnson wrote about. \u201cEverything was on location,\u201d Veloso says. \u201cThe cabin was built from scratch, the fire tower, everything\u2026 Having the sets built on location allowed us to move around a lot and also to give them space to do whatever they wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVeloso mapped out visual \u201crules\u201d for different periods of Robert\u2019s life. Childhood memories are static, like still photographs. \u201cFor those scenes we don\u2019t move the camera at all,\u201d he notes. Adulthood becomes more fluid: long handheld shots, moments glimpsed through windows, impressions that fade at the edges. Later life settles into a calmer, more stable gaze. \u201cWe don\u2019t want it to be obvious about it, like okay, now we\u2019re going to a flashback,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Edgerton, Grainier\u2019s near-wordlessness posed a unique challenge. \u201cIt becomes a real focusing exercise to go, OK, well, I don\u2019t have many words to express myself here,\u201d he says, \u201cbut the story looks after so much of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTwo lines in the script served as emotional anchors. One comes as Robert plays with his infant daughter: \u201cDo you think she knows that I\u2019m her daddy?\u201d Edgerton says the line captured \u201cthis sort of anxiety. \u2026 Are you a good father? What does it mean to be connected to each other?\u201d The second arrives when Robert finally breaks down. \u201cThe next thing he says is, \u2018I\u2019m sorry. I don\u2019t know what came over me.\u2019 And, to me, it said so much about the men that I\u2019ve known in Australia [who] just keep it all inside, and when they show emotion, they feel embarrassed. It has to stop. This movie is an intervention. Men need to show emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYet Edgerton\u2019s task in Train Dreams involved less accessing emotion than containing it. \u201cIt was: How do I be the stoic version of myself?\u201d he asks. \u201cRobert\u2019s not a guy who wants to show you his feelings.\u201d The role was also deeply physical, requiring him to inhabit a body shaped by decades of labor. \u201cWhat is an old logger walking around a town? How does he walk? I really love the physical aspects of movie [because] the whole performance has to live everywhere your body in every part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThrough all his hardship, Grainier retains moments of humor and warmth. \u201cHe\u2019s not life of the party, he\u2019s a listener and an observer, but he\u2019s got a few dad jokes, and he thinks he\u2019s pretty funny,\u201d says Edgerton. \u201cWe can see that joy with him, with [his wife] Gladys. And of course, we know when terrible things happen to us, people\u2019s joy ebbs away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of Edgerton\u2019s favorite moments from the shoot emerged spontaneously, as he and his onscreen daughter released chickens from a coop. \u201cKatie just started saying \u2018chicken\u2019 \u2026 and this chicken runs back, and Adolpho follows the chicken. It\u2019s like one of my favorite moments in the film [and shows] the beauty of what Clint allowed him to do and us to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFire shapes much of Train Dreams, from the glow of cabin candles to the devastating forest blaze. Veloso insisted on using real flames whenever possible. \u201cWhenever you see a fire, it\u2019s a real fire.\u201d The one exception is the film\u2019s major set piece \u2014 the massive forest fire \u2014 which required a wall of lights designed to mimic flame, shot in a landscape that had burned months earlier.<\/p>\n

\n\tBentley threads through these elements themes of ecological strain, displacement and technological change: the mechanization of logging, the abuse and expulsion of Chinese migrant workers, the uneasy harvesting of the natural world. Edgerton sees the film as open to many interpretations, depending on what viewers bring to it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd I think some people reach into the movie and go, this movie reminds me of my grief. Some people going this movie resonates for me on a way that I connect to the environment. I\u2019ve heard someone say they came out of the cinema, and it\u2019s like I could hear every bird, and I was listening to every sound. And some people come out and they said, want to go home and hug all the people that I love the most. It\u2019s kind of a mirror for you to reach and look at yourself, or look at the world you live in. Look at your place in it and wonder about things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis edition of THR Presents<\/a> was brought to you by Netflix<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clint Bentley\u2019s Train Dreams is a quiet film \u2014 a meditative frontier portrait defined as much by its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,1042,60,45832,270,1868,2625,95750,95751,45833],"class_list":{"0":"post-174228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-international","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-joel-edgerton","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-netflix","15":"tag-oscars","16":"tag-thr-original-video","17":"tag-thr-presents","18":"tag-train-dreams"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}