TRAIN DREAMS

Train Dreams is a careful balance of visual poetry and the harshness of First World War era America (the film spans 50 years but the majority of it takes between 1917 through the late 1920s). Director Clint Bentley certainly romanticizes old America in a very Terrence Malick-ian kind of way but he doesn’t shy away from showing the ugliness of chasing the American dream. A large chunk of the movie deals with loggers and railroad workers over a hundred years ago. People died horrible deaths in that line of work and Train Dreams shows this. Another storyteller would have made this a tale about unionizing or the corrupt inner workings of the American labor force. Instead we get straightforward scenes of workers breaking bones or getting crushed by trees.
In the film Joel Edgerton plays “Robert” - a logger & railroad laborer that struggles with the loss of his family. While this is technically a light spoiler, the voiceover narration hints at the tragic event in the opening minutes of the film. The story is less about the tragedy (which happens before we even get to the halfway point) and more about how Robert pushes on through the rest of film. No one can ever fully recover from the loss of a wife and child but he eventually moves on with his life to some degree. That’s the most disorienting aspect about Train Dreams. It’s incredibly depressing but also beautiful to look at.

Earlier I mentioned Malick’s influence which is more than just visual (Will Patton's voiceover narration is right out of the school of Malick). Tree Of Life was an obvious visual reference point for Train Dreams but so were his earlier works like Days Of Heaven.
There are some vague/general visual similarities which look nice when placed next to each other…

Tree Of Life / Train Dreams

but there are other super specific moments between both movies that really raised an antenna…

Tree Of Life / Train Dreams

Tree Of Life / Train Dreams

Malick’s filmography isn’t the only thing Train Dreams evokes/borrows from/steals from. This fits in line with other films like Matewan, First Cow or The Assassination of Jesse James…

The Assassination of Jesse James... / Train Dreams

In addition to following Robert’s stages of grief and depression, Train Dreams’ secondary plot is about a fast changing America. The movie starts in 1917 and ends in 1968. Throughout the film Robert witnesses and struggles with everything from the chainsaw replacing the handsaw in his line of work to the accessibility of the modern television.
This is the type of movie that could potentially get hijacked for the wrong reasons by the wrong audience (chronically online right-wingers that incorrectly romanticize old America for the wrong reasons), but if you’re a fan of Malick-esque visual poetry and non-biased American history, this might be something to check out.