Train Dreams-2025

Director Clint Bentley

Starring Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, William H. Macy

Scott’s Review #1,515

Reviewed February 4, 2026

Grade: A-

Train Dreams (2025) offers a character-driven approach to filmmaking that is also wonderfully cinematic, thanks in part to Clint Bentley’s direction.

Bently also wrote and produced 2023’s Sing Sing, but I think Train Dreams is the superior effort in terms of visuals alone. Adolpho Veloso is the film’s lead cinematographer and deserves major praise for the gorgeous look the film achieves.

The tone is often serene and quiet, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in the scenes’ tranquility without making the film drag. Landscapes, forests, and luminous sunsets are featured, providing an environmentally ubiquitous experience.

Will Patton narrates the film.

Train Dreams begins around 1917 and recounts the life of Robert Grainier, fantastically portrayed by Joel Edgerton, an example of an actor/director who continues to choose quality projects.

This may be his best role yet.

Robert begins life as an orphan, arriving in the desolate town of Bonners Ferry, Idaho, where he works aimlessly as a logger until he meets Gladys Olding (Felicity Jones). They marry, build a log cabin along the Moyie River, and have a daughter, Kate.

When tragedy strikes, Robert must reassess his life and purpose as he grows older and the years pass aimlessly by. Through the elements, he recognizes both beauty and brutality during his life-altering events and the redundancy of everyday life.

The scenes featuring Edgerton and Jones are the warmest and most touching. The pair shares a strong chemistry made more palpable because Robert is forced to leave his family for a portion of the year for work. Their joy at each reconciliation is apparent, with golden sunsets enveloping the happy couples’ most memorable moments.

Years later, Robert meets another woman named Claire (Kerry Condon), a Forest Service worker who is nearly a doppelganger for Gladys. We tenderly see the progressive, fearless woman Gladys might have become decades later, had she not been in a terrible accident.

Edgerton, the standout performer, easily displays his emotions on his face. Though tortured, he is also a dreamer and a kindly man, as proven when he is disturbed by an immigrant who is shot and killed, and an older man who has dementia.

There is an overall intimacy to Train Dreams that the audience can grasp. Robert’s frequent visions of Gladys, Katie, and the immigrant both disturb and comfort him as he evaluates his usefulness over his decades on Earth.

For a viewer like me who lives in a city, Train Dreams was an important reminder to appreciate the small, silent things in life, such as birds, grass, and trees. So easily overlooked, these elements remain long after the self-important human beings pass through.

I asked myself when the last time I was in a forest was, and I couldn’t come up with an answer.

Intricate sequences of spinning trees, with shifting focus, further enhance the creativity of the cinematography and production design.

The message Bentley creates also appears to be a comparison of the peace America once had, now tarnished by political discord, corruption, and chaos, which has destroyed most of its serenity.

But that’s a different conversation.

Above all, Train Dreams (2025) taught me not to get so hung up on stress and the rat race, but to put the brakes on from time to time to appreciate what really matters.

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Song, “Train Dreams”

Independent Spirit Awards Nominations: 3 wins-Best Feature (won), Best Director- Clint Bentley (won), Best Lead Performance- Joel Edgerton, Best Cinematography (won)