--- title: "Train Dreams" year: 2025 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/train-dreams" fi1m_score: 79 critics_score: 85 critics_reviews: 24 published: "2026-09-20T08:48:27.505794+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T08:48:49.711827+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Train Dreams (2025) Directed by Clint Bentley · 1h 42m · MPA PG-13 · Drama **Fi1m score: 79** · Critics 85 from 24 reviews *In a sentence:* Edgerton barely says forty words in a lifetime; Will Patton, off screen, says all the rest > Clint Bentley’s film of Denis Johnson’s novella is patient, beautifully shot and carried by a Joel Edgerton performance built almost entirely out of watching. It loses a little every time Will Patton’s narration tells us what a silence meant. ## Synopsis The Idaho panhandle, early in the twentieth century. Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) works the railway and logging crews cutting through the forest, and speaks as little as a man can and still hold a job. On a bridge gang he sees what the crew does to a labourer named Fu Sheng (Alfred Hsing), and the moment stays with him. He meets Gladys (Felicity Jones), marries her and makes a home with her in the woods. Each summer he leaves for the camps, where Arn Peeples (William H. Macy) does most of the talking, and a neighbour, Ignatius Jack (Nathaniel Arcand), trades with him. Will Patton narrates. ## Review Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) is a day labourer in the Idaho panhandle in the early years of the twentieth century. He fells trees, hauls timber and lays track for the railways pushing through the forest, and he does nearly all of it without speaking. Clint Bentley’s film, written with Greg Kwedar from Denis Johnson’s short novel, follows him from boyhood to old age, and takes 102 minutes to do it. It is a good film and we recommend it, with one reservation that got larger as it went along. Edgerton is the reason to go. Grainier has a few dozen lines, and Edgerton plays him as a man who listens harder than anyone around him and never knows what to do with what he hears. The scene that sets the terms comes early, on a railway bridge gang, and we will not describe what the crew does to a labourer named Fu Sheng (Alfred Hsing), except that Grainier is part of it. We were horrified, and more horrified by what follows, which is lunch. Edgerton keeps that moment in his face for the rest of the film; it comes back in dreams and in the way he looks at strangers. Then he meets Gladys (Felicity Jones) and the film slows to the pace of a marriage. Their home is a cabin in the woods, and Alexandra Schaller’s production design makes it a real one: a single room, unfinished planks, a stove, a bed you could believe took a week to make. Malgosia Turzanska dresses them in wool and canvas that darkens over the years without ever looking like costume. Jones is light here; Gladys teases, reads aloud, laughs at her husband’s silences rather than waiting them out. These scenes moved us more than the grander ones later. A daughter arrives. Grainier goes off to the logging camps each summer to pay for it all. The logging camps are the film’s other half. William H. Macy’s Arn Peeples talks more than the rest of the crew put together, and Macy plays him without a wink, which is why he lands. Clifton Collins Jr. and John Diehl fill out the crew as men who have never done anything else. Nathaniel Arcand’s Ignatius Jack, a neighbour who trades with Grainier, gets little screen time and makes it count. Adolpho Veloso shoots all of it in low natural light, the sun coming sideways through cedars, and when a tree comes down he holds the shot long enough for us to feel the size of it. Parker Laramie cuts between camp, cabin and memory with dissolves rather than hard cuts, so the years slide. Our reservation is Will Patton. His narration is drawn from Johnson’s prose and he reads it well, in the voice of a man telling a story by a stove. The trouble is how much of it there is. Johnson’s book is short and flat and lets terrible things sit on the page unremarked; Bentley keeps the events and adds a voice to tell us what Grainier felt about them, sometimes while Edgerton is already showing us. Bryce Dessner’s score does the same, strings rising under moments that were full to begin with. Twice we caught ourselves resenting being told, and both times Edgerton had the scene in hand without help. Most critics have reached for Terrence Malick, and we see the resemblance in the light. But this narration explains. The second half moves in ways we will not describe. Kerry Condon appears in it as Claire Thompson, a stranger kinder to Grainier than he knows what to do with, and their one long conversation is the best late scene in the film. Paul Schneider’s Apostle Frank passes through as a preacher of a familiar American kind, all promise and no patience. The country being built around Grainier arrives on schedule: railways, mills, thinning forest. The narration notes each one in the tone of someone reading out the weather. It is a 12A, and a slow one, and the two of you should agree before the lights go down that nothing here is going to happen fast. See it on the largest screen you can, for the trees. Then read the book, in one sitting, and notice how much it gets said without a narrator. *Fi1m score 79, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews are unanimous: all twenty-four are positive, and most are a good deal warmer than that. The praise clusters around Joel Edgerton as the logger Robert Grainier, whose restraint several critics call the best work of his career, and around Adolpho Veloso’s cinematography, which is described as painterly more often than not. Will Patton’s narration and Bryce Dessner’s score come up nearly as often. The Malick comparison is made so often it amounts to a consensus of its own. Where they part is on how much of this lyricism the material can bear. The Financial Times finds a strain of preciousness, Eye for Film a drift towards sentimentality, and Slant a gap between the film’s visual lushness and the terseness of Denis Johnson’s novella. These are gentle complaints; the spread runs from admiring to rapturous, with nothing beneath it. Even the most reserved critics, mostly in the British broadsheets, end up recommending it. ### Reviews we read (24) - **The Times**, Kevin Maher (★★★★★): This stunner is hailed as an unforgettable frontier drama and the greatest Terrence Malick movie Malick never made. Superb performances from Edgerton and Jones lead a fable-like tale pulsing with awards potential. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/train-dreams-review-felicity-jones-joel-edgerton-6zlc2hxvk) - **Time Out**, Ian Freer (5/5): The critic hails it as a peach of a picture that is at once miniaturist yet epic and exquisite, touching every human emotion without contrivance or strain. They single out its elegiac character study of an ordinary life made rich and complex. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/train-dreams-review-2025) - **Vulture** (95/100, inferred): The critic hails the film as a staggering work of art and one of the year’s best, a trancelike adaptation that ruminates on the interconnectedness of life through Joel Edgerton’s performance, Will Patton’s narration, rapturous cinematography, and Bryce Dessner’s score. It praises the epic spirit and mythic grandeur lent to an ordinary man’s longing for peace and purpose. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/sundance-review-train-dreams-is-a-staggering-work-of-art.html) - **Los Angeles Times**, Mark Olsen (90/100, inferred): The film is told with unassuming, gentle simplicity that grows into accumulating emotional power, feeling small yet vast while exploring life's meaning in a lyrical way. It features a standout, fully realized performance from Joel Edgerton as the quiet logger Robert Grainier, supported by fine cinematography and period details. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-11-06/train-dreams-review-joel-edgerton-william-macy-felicity-jones-kerry-condon) - **Sight and Sound** (90/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as an extraordinary epic ballad of a railroad man that captures the dawning of a new America. They single out Joel Edgerton's career-best performance and America itself as the film's real star, noting its ambivalent view of progress. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/train-dreams-epic-ballad-railroad-man-captures-dawning-new-america) - **The AV Club**, Jacob Oller (A-): The critic calls the film a thoroughly engrossing period piece of dreamy details, quietly told and expertly performed, that captures persistence through change in an awestruck, ethereal drama. It singles out the golden-hour nature photography, production design, and Joel Edgerton’s portrayal of a man haunted by universal regrets amid historical cruelties. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/train-dreams-review) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney (90/100, inferred): The critic praises Clint Bentley’s elegiac portrait of an ordinary logger’s life in the early 20th-century Pacific Northwest as an intimate drama with epic resonance, anchored by Joel Edgerton’s layered performance and Adolpho Veloso’s painterly cinematography. It highlights the film’s rapturous melancholy, noble resilience amid tragedy, and the cumulative weight of moments that define a life. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/train-dreams-review-joel-edgerton-felicity-jones-clint-bentley-1236118932/) - **The Observer**, Wendy Ide (90/100, inferred): This is called a superb adaptation that etches the sparse poetry of the source novella into every frame. The critic highlights the fragmented memories and fleeting encounters in the taciturn logger's life, plus strong work from Edgerton, Jones, and the cinematographer. [Read](https://observer.co.uk/culture/film/article/wendy-ides-pick-of-other-films-train-dreams-dragonfly-predator-badlands-the-choral-and-more) - **Empire**, John Nugent (85/100, inferred): The critic calls it a true hidden gem and meditative tone poem on living a good life. They single out Joel Edgerton's understated performance and the film's haunting, serenely composed beauty for praise. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/train-dreams/) - **IndieWire**, Ryan Lattanzio (80/100, inferred): The review commends Joel Edgerton’s quietly hardened yet kind-eyed performance as the ruminating logger Robert Grainier in Clint Bentley’s rugged adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novella. It describes the film as a surreal and tragic Pacific Northwest fever dream that philosophically explores the character’s life. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/train-dreams-review-1235088471/) - **Little White Lies**, Laura Venning (3/4/4): The critic calls it a subtle, textured and moving adaptation evoking Malick's melancholy and grandeur. They praise Joel Edgerton's never-better performance as the quietly desperate Grainier. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/train-dreams) - **Radio Times**, Tom Dawson (4/5): The critic calls it a meditative drama channelling Malick that immerses viewers in Grainier's subjective experiences across decades. They single out the wonderful cinematography and Edgerton's moving restraint as the stoical protagonist. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-dr55r3/train-dreams/) - **Financial Times**, Jonathan Romney (70/100, inferred): The adaptation is a resonant and sensitive film about time outpacing us, centered on a lumberjack's transformative crises and lyrical family idyll in early 20th-century Idaho. It celebrates beauty while acknowledging elements of preciousness. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/e958c682-ef34-406e-aaae-d24191b48143) - **Slant Magazine**, David Robb (70/100, inferred): The review describes Clint Bentley’s film as an earnest elegy to the American frontier that surveys the era’s upheavals with an ambivalent eye, centered on Joel Edgerton’s subtle performance as the passive, bewildered logger. It notes the measured mythologizing and appealing take on the American story, while observing some disconnect between the visual lyricism and the terse source material. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/train-dreams-review-joel-edgerton/) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (70/100, inferred): The critic praises this Malick-influenced adaptation of Denis Johnson's novella as a lovely-looking, deeply felt film with considerable power. Edgerton's restrained performance as the logger anchors the story of grief, labor, and fleeting happiness in early 20th-century Idaho. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/nov/06/train-dreams-reviewjoel-edgerton-denis-johnson) - **The Telegraph** (70/100, inferred): The film is described as a lyrical, consoling period piece that earns its novelistic quality in under two hours. It captures the plaintive beauty of the logger's marginal life with stunning photography and understated performances. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/train-dreams-netflix-joel-edgerton/) - **/Film**, Chris Evangelista (10/10): The critic calls the film one of 2025's best and a breathtaking adaptation of the novella. They single out Joel Edgerton's poetic quietude in the lead role for particular praise. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/2030913/train-dreams-review/) - **Collider**, Ross Bonaime (95/100, inferred): The film is an absolute knockout and monumentally powerful story of a man living his life in early 20th-century America that will hit viewers at their core. It singles out the stunning visuals and Joel Edgerton's and Felicity Jones's tremendous performances for praise. [Read](https://collider.com/train-dreams-joel-edgerton-felicity-jones-netflix/) - **Paste**, Jesse Hassenger (8.5): The film chronicles the quiet passage of history and loss of time in a spellbinding way over a lifetime of enormous changes. It singles out Clint Bentley's direction and the performances, especially Joel Edgerton's career-best work, for praise. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/clint-bentley/train-dreams-joel-edgerton-felicity-jones-netflix-movie) - **The Playlist**, Marshall Shaffer (A-): The critic describes the film as a rhapsodic tribute that translates the novella into cinematic poetry with a career-best performance at its center. They single out the control over time and rhythm, gliding across a lifetime with grace and spiritual lift. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/train-dreams-review-a-career-best-performance-from-joel-edgerton-makes-a-poetic-slice-of-americana-soar-sundance-20250131/) - **Deadline**, Damon Wise (85/100, inferred): The film is a moving, masterful study of a working man’s life marked by love, loss and quiet acceptance. Bentley’s direction and the lead performances stand out for their grounded emotional depth and visual poetry. [Read](https://deadline.com/2025/11/train-dreams-review-clint-bentley-joel-edgerton-felicity-jones-1236611920/) - **Den of Geek**, Joe George (85/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a beautiful, heartbreaking work that uses its quiet protagonist and lyrical narration to explore America's unresolved sins of expansion, racism, and industrialization. It singles out the lush cinematography, score, and voiceover for creating emotional depth beyond the simple story of one man's life. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/best-picture-nominee-train-dreams-is-a-beautiful-movie-about-americas-sins/) - **The Wrap** (80/100, inferred): Clint Bentley’s film is a patient, profound and painful historical drama with spectacular performances from Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones. It stands out for its immersive, painterly visuals and delicate writing that captures intimate lives in the Pacific Northwest. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/train-dreams-review-joel-edgerton-felicity-jones-sundance/) - **Eye for Film**, Amber Wilkinson (75/100, inferred): The critic finds the adaptation a handsome take on an ordinary life deeply rooted in history and landscape, with a soulful central performance. They single out the attractive narration and cinematography for praise while noting a tendency toward sentimentality. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/train-dreams-2025-film-review-by-amber-wilkinson) ## Details - **Director:** Clint Bentley - **Director:** Clint Bentley - **Screenplay:** Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar - **Novel:** Denis Johnson - **Cinematography:** Adolpho Veloso - **Editor:** Parker Laramie - **Music:** Bryce Dessner - **Production design:** Alexandra Schaller - **Costume design:** Malgosia Turzanska - **Producer:** Marissa McMahon, Teddy Schwarzman, Will Janowitz - **Cast:** Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier; Felicity Jones as Gladys Grainier; Nathaniel Arcand as Ignatius Jack; Clifton Collins Jr. as Boomer; John Diehl as Billy; Paul Schneider as Apostle Frank; Kerry Condon as Claire Thompson; William H. Macy as Arn Peeples - **Runtime:** 1h 42m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG-13 - **Release (the US):** 7 November 2025 - **Genres:** Drama - **Also in:** [Best Picture winners](https://film.one/collections/oscar-best-picture.md) (Nominee, 2025) - **Budget:** $10 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6voWeM-xQ4Y ## Where to watch in the US - Netflix: streaming *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, AZ, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Independent Spirit Awards 2026: Best Film (won) ## If you liked this - *Days of Heaven* (1978), Fi1m 85: Malick’s Texas panhandle; the film most critics reached for, and rightly — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/days-of-heaven.md) - *The Tree of Wooden Clogs* (1978): Olmi’s Lombardy peasants; a year of ordinary lives told with the same patience - *First Cow* (2019): Reichardt’s Oregon; two men, a cow, and a frontier with no use for gentleness - *Sunset Song* (2015): Terence Davies’s Scottish farm girl; a life measured in seasons and losses - *Jockey* (2021): Bentley’s first film; Clifton Collins Jr. as an ageing rider, small and exact --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/train-dreams