Netflix’s Train Dreams brings Denis Johnson’s novella to life, exploring the quiet, memory-filled world of Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker in early 20th-century America. Directed by Clint Bentley and co-written by Bentley and Greg Kwedar, the film follows Robert as he lives through a rapidly changing American landscape. Joel Edgerton leads a cast that includes Felicity Jones, Nathaniel Arcand, Clifton Collins Jr., John Diehl, Paul Schneider, Kerry Condon and William H. Macy, with narration by Will Patton.
Bentley said the project has been years in the making, and came together in parallel with his and Kwedar’s other work. “It’s a good question, I think because Greg directed Sing Sing. I directed Jockey before doing this one, and we had actually written this film before we shot Sing Sing,” he explained in a recent interview with Blavity’s Shadow and Act, along with cinematographer Adolfo Veloso and Edgerton. “And then I started shooting this while Greg was still in the edit on Sing Sing. And so it’s funny, I don’t know that I can say, other than to say there’s maybe something that we’re trying to explore or talk about that’s bubbling up, that goes across those two films or those three films.”
The film leans heavily on mood, silence and memory, creating space for viewers to reflect and feel their way through Robert’s story. “I like to give the audience space, and I like that when I watch a film,” Bentley said. “But in these films, giving the audience space to go in their own experience, and I find that when you do that a lot of times, then the audience starts to go inside themselves and make something new from the film and find things within themselves that you can’t necessarily point them to.”
That inward gaze is deeply felt in how the film is shot. Veloso said they approached the visuals like piecing together someone’s memories. “That’s always tricky, I feel, especially with period pieces, to make it feel grounded and to make the audience connect to those characters,” Veloso said. “So that was a discussion we had a lot, like how do we make this feel connectable? And the main thing we discussed is that we wanted the movie to feel like you were watching someone’s memories.”
He added, “We have this metaphor, which was basically almost like a found box full of pictures of someone’s life. And you’re going through those pictures trying to understand what life that person lived, somehow. And those pictures are out of order, those pictures are sometimes more posed, some pictures are more spontaneous. We wanted to have both the proximity to make you feel like you’re almost like another character there with them, living that thing together, but sometimes also step back and have that from a different point of view.”
Bringing Robert Grainier to life — quietly, powerfully
For Edgerton, playing Robert Grainier meant drawing from personal truths. Much of the role required stillness—nonverbal moments that revealed everything through emotion and memory rather than dialogue.
“It becomes a different kind of experience, certainly. Like, it focuses things for me,” Edgerton said. “I have so many kind of crossovers with this character in my own life. I have all the experiences of Robert except for some of the really heavier stuff, thank God. But I felt like it was so much of this is me. I have family, I have two young kids, I’m in love. I do a job that takes me away from them sometimes, and it makes me fret. And my biggest fear is I always worry about my kids.”
He continued, “I just realized that all these thoughts are in my head anyway. And knowing that a camera can read your soul more than any other character, I think if I could just sort of have the right thoughts in my mind and bare my soul, then it would be okay. And there’s a bit of playing dress-up, and the physical side, but the most important and potent stuff for me is what goes through Robert’s mind because he’s thinking a lot and not expressing himself. He’s feeling a lot and not letting it out.”
Joel Edgerton on shooting the film’s fire scenes
The film’s fire imagery stands out as both literal and metaphorical. “Fire is used in all of its power from both ends of the spectrum in this film,” Edgerton said. “Fire is light and food and warmth… and then of course there’s the devastating aspects of fire. That fire can tear us down, tear our worlds down. And we see both of that in this film.”
He recalled shooting a scene in a forest that had burned months before. “Just focusing [on] how dangerous that is to move through. And I was moving through that,” he said. “Then on the flip side, Adolpho, the incredible cinematographer, is shooting all of those scenes without extra lights in the cabin and by the firelight with William H. Macy to the point where we can’t even see the camera. I am just sitting there with William by the fire doing the dialogue, feeling like we’re just together after a long day’s work, and somewhere off in the darkness, the camera is capturing this.”
Bentley said that same layered, emotional depth extended to how he approached casting, even for smaller roles. “When you look back on your life and you think back to, I went to that wedding and I met that person and had a great weekend with that person and we didn’t really keep in contact, but I’ll remember that person forever,” he said. “Wanting them all to feel like that, like they did have a big impact.”
He continued, “What you do as a filmmaker in the casting process is you just go to these amazing actors like Bill Macy or Kerry Condon and you say, ‘Hey, here’s this character. It could be beautiful, it could be great, it’s not much screen time, but it’ll be a big impact. Will you do it?’ And usually they pass and you move on and find somebody else. But in this case, we got very, very lucky with everybody—John Diehl also, and Paul Schneider—and very lucky.”
Train Dreams is now streaming on Netflix.