He was born just after Tchaikovsky completed the 1812 Overture and died the month The Beatles released The White Album. But Robert Grainier, whose fictional life story is told in Train Dreams – a new film based on Denis Johnson’s astonishing novella – probably heard neither. He is, however, one of the men who built modern America.
Grainier lived through times of immense change, spanning eras in an extraordinary ordinary life. Yet he saw very little of the change. He never even saw the sea.
Instead, as Train Dreams shows so beautifully through Joel Edgerton’s lead performance, he lived simply, frugally, quietly in the woods. Not a leader, never feted, Grainier was one of thousands of itinerant workers who cut down the logs that were used to construct the railway that connected the US, uniting the states and forging an economic superpower.
The actor, who transforms in appearance and accent for the film, adds, “I love the idea that the central character of a film can celebrate the heroism of an ordinary life. In terms of story templates, there an extraordinary person doing something ordinary – like Notting Hill, where the movie star comes and has a normal local life. Or the opposite is someone simple gets to live in an extraordinary sphere or do something out of this world.
“But this is something different altogether. It’s just giving the audience the space and time to watch an ordinary life play out in its entirety, so we can ask ourselves questions of, what is the meaning of this life that we have, in all its ups and downs?
“It’s not presuming to give you the answer to, what is the meaning of life… but it does maybe make you ask yourself what is the meaning of a life? What does it all add up to?”
Edgerton discovered a real connection with the landscape of the Pacific North West of the US, where Train Dreams was filmed.
“I’m a pretty bare bones, basic sort of human being, and I don’t know how I feel about reincarnation or other esoteric ideas or loftier notions, but I often feel like an old soul,” he says. “And I feel much more comfortable lying down in mud and playing with dogs in a forest than I do if you’re asking me to be a corporate guy in a New York office or something.
“So I felt very comfortable in those environments. And on a cinematic level, it is also beautiful to look at.
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“We often forget that we’re part of this world we live in, because we live in concrete cities and we’re always wearing shoes. Our feet aren’t really on the ground. When human beings sit in the cinema and watch nature, I’d love to get some sense of measurement or biometrics on what it does to the brain and how it lights it up.”
Train Dreams, like the original novella, connects on multiple levels. Releasing a film showing the quiet heroism of the people who built America at a time the country appears to be being dismantled from within is provocative and timely.
“The film is definitely addressing those themes,” says Felicity Jones, the British star Oscar-nominated for The Theory Of Everything and The Brutalist, who brings huge depth to a supporting role.
“That’s what was so appealing about it. It is a portrait of America in many ways and all the lives and time that has gone into building that country and that country being built off the backs of people from all over the world coming to that place, trying to create a better life. I think that’s at the heart of the story, really.”
We follow Grainier for decades as he struggles to find meaning until he makes a profound connection – first with Gladys (Jones), who he marries, and later, after experiencing devastating loss and loneliness, via a short-lived but meaningful friendship with forestry worker Claire (Kerry Condon).
“It is asking these bigger themes around the meaning of life and so much of that is from love and trying to build a life with someone,” says Jones, who began the year alongside Adrien Brody in The Brutalist – a film she sees as addressing similar themes, albeit it in very different ways.
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“Train Dreams really address those big questions – and it’s saying that within progress and the march of technology, it’s the smaller moments that count.”
Condon, recent star of F1 and The Banshees of Inisherin, adds: “Train Dreams shows that everyone’s life is important and poetic and beautiful and sad – and there’s beauty even in those sad moments, because you’re alive, you know?”
Director Clint Bentley, who co-wrote the screenplay with Greg Kwedar – the duo having been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay category for Sing Sing earlier this year – brings all the themes, big and small, together.
There’s the love and connection: “When you read an obituary, it’s like, this person did this and that and this and that, and at the end ‘he or she’s survived by’… but that little ‘they’re survived by’ is where the magic and the meaning of life is, right?,” says Bentley. “The accomplishments, no matter how grand, they are gonna come and go and largely be forgotten. But who you connected with and how you connected with them and the impact they had on your life, that’s what it’s all about.”
And there’s the reminder that progress comes at a significant cost: “We still take from nature without thinking in service of progress,” he says. “At that point, it was taking logs and clear-cutting forests. Now we’re hoovering up all the water resources for AI factories. It’s insane.”
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But the film’s lasting impression is as a deep, profound and thoughtful celebration of life’s unsung heroes – as well as an elegy to a lost time and sensibility.
“It tells the story of a very average life and a very simple life on the surface, but you can mine so much depth from it,” says Bentley. “What I loved was taking a small life and showing the beauty and the power of it, reminding people of the resonance and depth of a life well lived.
“I come from a very working-class background. And I have so many family members who drove log trucks and were cattle ranchers. There’s never going to be a plaque for them, and yet they’re the ones who push the world ahead.”
Train Dreams is in cinemas now and on Netflix from 21 November.
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