Train Dreams, the 2011 novella by Denis Johnson, had a profound effect on both Clint Bentley and Joel Edgerton. The story, about a logger named Rober
Train Dreams, the 2011 novella by Denis Johnson, had a profound effect on both Clint Bentley and Joel Edgerton. The story, about a logger named Robert Grainier who helps build railroads at the turn of the 20th century, is a moving meditation on grief, change, and one’s place in the world. “I found myself thinking about things from it years after reading it,” says Bentley. “It gets in people’s bones and just sticks to them.”
That’s true of Edgerton as well, though he and Bentley didn’t know each other when they each first encountered the novel. Bentley read it some 14 years ago; Edgerton first stumbled upon the book a few years later. He immediately started looking into acquiring the rights to make an adaptation, but at the time, they’d already been snatched up.
Edgerton now sees that as a good thing. By the time Bentley reached out to him about Train Dreams, both Bentley and Edgerton had become fathers, and had been through more highs and lows in their own lives. Those substantial life moments would weave their way into their version of Train Dreams, directed by Bentley and starring Edgerton, and adapted by Bentley and his Sing Sing cowriter Greg Kwedar. Their movie is fine and deeply existential, with breathtaking imagery and a moving, heartbreaking performance at its center.
“The story tells me that life is really worth living, despite some of the hardships,” says Edgerton. “Through Robert, there was this sense that human beings are incredibly durable and incredibly resilient.”
Train Dreams, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will next play the Toronto Film Festival on September 9, follows Grainier (Edgerton) as he comes of age in the Pacific Northwest and falls in love with Gladys (Felicity Jones). They build a home and have a daughter, but Grainier’s work often forces him to travel far from his family. He then suffers a devastating loss that upends his entire way of life, leaving him searching for meaning and reflecting on the rapidly changing American landscape.
Bentley began working on his script for Train Dreams just as he had his first son, which was also around the time he lost both his parents in quick succession. “I wanted to express that aspect of grief that happens right away,” he says. “But then there’s an aspect that stays with you—the filter that it puts over the rest of your life.”
Bentley was looking for a lead who could relay the wide range of emotions Grainier experiences without using many words. “I come from a working-class background. My uncle was a logger and my grandfather was a rancher,” says Bentley. “They’re these men who on the surface don’t seem to be thinking much because they’re not saying much, and yet they say three words and it’s something very deep and resonant and beautiful.”
Bentley reached out to Edgerton—not only because the actor had played similarly internal characters in films like Loving and Midnight Special, but also because he had another side to him. “He plays a lot of hard and tough characters,” the director says of Edgerton. At the same time, he has “this very sweet quality to him, a boyishness that I think we haven’t seen in a lot of his roles.”
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