{"id":281406,"date":"2025-11-09T14:31:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T14:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/281406\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T14:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T14:31:13","slug":"clint-bentleys-moving-tale-of-love-and-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/281406\/","title":{"rendered":"Clint Bentley\u2019s Moving Tale Of Love And Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhere does the time go? Clint Bentley<\/a>\u2019s follow-up to 2021\u2019s impressive but annoyingly little-seen Jockey is a moving, masterful study of a life without such measure, a working man\u2019s blues that begins at the end of the late 19th century, just as civilization is trying to get its act together, and stops short of the moon landing in 1969. In style, Terrence Malick\u2019s films are an obvious reference, but Train Dreams<\/a> is much less abstract than that, despite its golden-hour glories and verdant views of nature in the wild. At its core, Bentley\u2019s film is about a man trying to make sense of the tragic hand that fate has dealt him, and, finally, accepting the mystery of it all with a hard-earned, beatific grace.<\/p>\n

\n\tGently expounded with a God-like omniscience by an unseen narrator (Will Patton), Train Dreams takes place in a space between the then and the now, being simultaneously of the past and in the moment (Bentley plays with time in unexpected ways). At the center is Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton<\/a>), a logger working for the railroad companies that are steadily transforming the country. Work brings men from all over, from Shanghai to Chattanooga, a brief evocation of the American experiment that is shattered for Grainier when a Chinese worker is picked on and thrown to his death for no reason outside of racism.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough a good man, Grainier doesn\u2019t make a fuss, but the guilt follows him. He\u2019s not the complaining type, content with his lot, but a chance encounter with Gladys (Felicity Jones<\/a>) at a church meet changes some of that. Grainier falls for Gladys hard, and their subsequent relationship passes by in a delirium of broad strokes, unfolding moment by moment \u2014 throughout the film, time seems to exist outside the frame, which is usually tight and very intimately focused. After this, Grainier is away for weeks or months at a time, a sad fact that Gladys becomes resigned or perhaps hardened to (\u201cNo broken fingers this time?\u201d she asks, leaving us to fill in the gaps). Grainier will only get to see their child growing up in fragments, raised in their idyllic, hand-built cabin in the woods.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, he\u2019s off on the job, joined by a picaresque troupe of fellow travelers such as the man who never speaks, or the Bible freak who harbors a completely leftfield secret, or Arn Peoples (William H. Macy<\/a>), a garrulous and charismatic \u201cgadabout of unknown origin\u201d who is both the group\u2019s explosives expert and the oldest man on the job (it\u2019s a testament to the quality of Bentley\u2019s film that Macy doesn\u2019t steal it). Arn\u2019s earnest philosophy starts to rub off on Grainier, wondering aloud about the cosmic stitching of the universe. Tennessee Ernie Ford\u2019s famous song comes to mind here: you load 16 tons and what do you get?<\/p>\n

\n\tTragedy strikes many times in this decades-spanning story, in many forms, but the defining event of Grainier\u2019s life sees his home burned to the ground, an event that eerily prefigures the LA fires of early 2025. Grainier\u2019s life is literally reduced to ashes, and the fate of his wife and daughter is, movingly, never resolved. Later in the film Grainier will say that that \u201csometimes it feels like the sadness will eat me alive\u201d and yet also \u201csometimes it feels like it happened to someone else\u201d. For the rest of its running time \u2014 and there\u2019s a fair bit still to come \u2014 Train Dreams will walk that fine line spectacularly. It\u2019s where it lives.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn that sense, it\u2019s a strangely metaphysical biopic, in that it\u2019s not about the importance of one specific life as it is about the way all lives add up in the long run, and it\u2019s telling that it ends at a crucial moment in history, as mankind is entering the space race but not yet on the moon (at which time the hermetic Grainier doesn\u2019t even have a landline). It\u2019s about the things that happen to people outside these kinds of milestones, watching evolution from the sidelines, and Bentley\u2019s film charts an unromantic and not-so-distant past that seems like it could either have sprung from a pre-electric Dylan or be a brand-new Nick Cave song just waiting to happen. (Fun fact: The wait is over, and, since its Sundance premiere, that exact, haunting song now plays over the credits.)<\/p>\n

\n\tLike the story it tells, Train Dreams shuffles into awards season very much as an outsider, presenting itself amid the noise of bigger and starrier contenders. But its low-key focus shouldn\u2019t be underestimated: Bentley\u2019s film is the outlier to watch in this year\u2019s race; a disarmingly human film about who we are, how we get to where we are, and how we survive. It\u2019s lovely. It\u2019s one from the heart.<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle: Train Dreams
Director: Clint Bentley
Screenwriters: Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, from the book by Denis Johnson
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Clifton Collins Jr.<\/a>, Kerry Condon, William H. Macy
Distributor: Netflix
Running time: 1 hr 42 mins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Where does the time go? Clint Bentley\u2019s follow-up to 2021\u2019s impressive but annoyingly little-seen Jockey is a moving,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[148885,148886,88,131661,135937,206,899,122900,124991],"class_list":{"0":"post-281406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-clifton-collins-jr","9":"tag-clint-bentley","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-felicity-jones","12":"tag-joel-edgerton","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-review","15":"tag-train-dreams","16":"tag-william-h-macy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}