{"id":271493,"date":"2026-02-07T00:33:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T00:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/271493\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T00:33:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T00:33:11","slug":"why-train-dreams-changed-the-books-ending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/271493\/","title":{"rendered":"Why ‘Train Dreams’ Changed the Book’s Ending"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a short time, director\u00a0Clint Bentley\u00a0<\/a>lost both his parents and then welcomed his first child, both of which he carried into his adaptation of Denis Johnson\u2019s \u201cTrain Dreams<\/a>\u201d with his longtime writing and producing partner, Greg Kwedar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s novella captured specific, sometimes seemingly insignificant, moments in the life of an ordinary logger named Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton<\/a>), who died at 80. While on this week\u2019s episode of the Toolkit podcast<\/a>, Bentley talked about how, at the time, following his experience with death and birth, he was thinking about what we actually remember from our own lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think about our life in turning points,\u201d said Bentley. \u201cAnd then yet looking back, you find that a lot of the most special moments are the more mundane \u2014 that random Saturday morning you spent with your family and you weren\u2019t planning anything, and then it became one of the most special days of your lives together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"WUTHERING<\/a> \"Pillion\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

A blueprint for how to string together ephemeral moments to create a sense of slipping through time in a less plot-driven way was what Bentley hoped to unlock by adapting the story of a quiet logger.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was thinking about the films that inspired me, that really changed my understanding of the form,\u201d said Bentley. \u201cI was \u200athinking about the films of [Andrei] Tarkovsky and [Abbas] Kiarostami<\/a>, that find some rhythm of their own, that settle into this poetic rhythm, often the rhythms of nature. I wanted to make a film<\/a> that would do for my uncle, or my grandparents, what [Robert] Bresson<\/a> does for me. \u200aThey would never watch a Tarkovsky film, but trying to give them some version of what I get from those films.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert\u2019s life and the film are set against the dramatic changes that came with technological advances like the railroad, but \u201cTrain Dreams\u201d is the inverse of what one comes to expect of these type of stories. Robert is not a man of his time, riding the wave of innovation, but more of an innocent bystander. Bentley felt a connection, having, in just his 40 years, grown up without the internet at home to being in this disorienting digital-smartphone-AI moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very much like Grainier at times where I\u2019m just kind of being pulled along through life,\u201d said the \u201cTrain Dreams\u201d co-writer and director.<\/p>\n

But how to mirror that in the narrative structure? \u201cA big struggle with the adaptation and with making the film is trying to break it away from narrative form, where it\u2019s not operating on this sense of, \u2018Okay, there\u2019s going be a inciting incident for this story, then a second act twist,\u2019\u201d said Bentley. \u201cTrying to let the film take more of the form of life, while also making the audience feel like they\u2019re being taken on a journey, that knows where it\u2019s going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding that balance and framework would determine the film\u2019s success. The first half of the film supplied the raw materials for the stringing together of these fleeting poetic moments with a sense of narrative thrust: Robert falls in love, builds a home, has a daughter, and is forced to leave his new family for far-off work, only to one day return to a tragic fire that marks the film\u2019s midpoint.<\/p>\n

The second half of the film, where Robert tries to find purpose in the hazy aftermath of grief, had the potential to feel more amorphous. According to Bentley, the arc of the second-half was based purely on the character\u2019s emotional journey, and by design, would require constant restructuring, all the way through post-production.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe book has one of the great endings in literature,\u201d said Bentley, describing the scene where Robert travels to town and sees an adaptation of \u201cWolf Boy\u201d performed on stage, which reflects back to him what he lost and changed in his own life. That scene was shot, and a short version of it is in the movie, but \u201cit did not work [as the ending] for the film that I found I was making.\u201d<\/p>\n

What makes the \u201cTrain Dreams\u201d script so successful is that it finds ways to adapt the internalized prose, but is also not anchored to them.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Editor] Parker [Laramie] and I were cutting, we got to that moment in the plane, and we got through that going into the end and I was like, \u2018Oh, the film\u2019s done. Emotionally, the film was over,\u201d said Bentley of watching the film through the plane sequence. \u201cYou check with your partners, your producers, Greg and say, \u2018I\u2019m not crazy here. Right? This is the end?\u2019 And everybody\u2019s like, \u2018Yeah, go for it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TRAIN\u2018Train Dreams\u2019\u00a9Netflix\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Laramie and Bentley found ways to weave the book\u2019s original ending, including \u201cWolf Boy\u201d and seeing John Glenn become the first man to orbit the Earth, into the film. The final touch, though, was interspersing Robert\u2019s memories into his joyous, climactic plane ride. Laramie and Bentley used alternate versions of scenes from earlier in the film. For example, in the beginning of the film, Robert tries to keep his two-year-old daughter\u2019s attention with a magic trick involving a flower, but she walks away. In his memory on the plane, they used a take where she loved the trick.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of the takes [of the memories cut into the plane sequence] are either things we didn\u2019t see earlier, or different takes, and part of that was to go back to this idea and this theme of memory being something that changes over your life,\u201d said Bentley. \u201cIn the plane, it\u2019s as if he\u2019s remembering a sweeter version of that last moment with his kid than actually happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

For awards<\/a> season, Bentley and Kwedar refuse to release an updated version of the now nominated screenplay to conform to the way the film is edited. That the script allowed for a blueprint to exand on the theme of what we remember from our lives is not a flaw, but a feature.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreg and I purposely left the script as it was written going into production,\u201d said Bentley. \u201cBecause I like being able to read, for example, where did \u2018Days of Heaven\u2019 or \u2018Goodfellas\u2019 start, versus where they ended up. And I have to tell you, I think the opening of [\u2018Train Dreams\u2019], as it was written, and the same as the ending, they were very good in the script. They just didn\u2019t work as well in the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

To hear Clint Bentley<\/a>\u2018s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast<\/a> on\u00a0Apple<\/a>,\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, or your favorite podcast platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a short time, director\u00a0Clint Bentley\u00a0lost both his parents and then welcomed his first child, both of which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[10779,54596,156,593,68215,409,111,139,69,54599],"class_list":{"0":"post-271493","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-awards","9":"tag-clint-bentley","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-film","12":"tag-filmmaker-toolkit-podcast","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-train-dreams"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}