It’s safe to say that 2025 has seen some great films. However, only a few can hold a candle to the sublime stunner that is Clint Bentley’s “Train Dreams.”
Releasing in select area theaters starting Nov. 6 before streaming on Netflix on Nov. 21, the Washington-shot and -set adaptation of the essential novella of the same name by the late Denis Johnson is a film of quietly overwhelming emotion and rich visual splendor. The film made a splash at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and is a serious best picture contender at the Oscars. But it’s also a spectacular showcase of the largely underutilized potential of the state to become home to breathtaking works of cinema.
Taking us into the life of Joel Edgerton’s Robert Grainier, a Washington laborer working in the early 20th century to build a country that will leave him behind, “Train Dreams” is both profoundly specific in its depiction of history and thematically resonant today. It’s about the life he builds, the deeply loving connections he forms — with those like wife Gladys (Felicity Jones) and friend Arn (William H. Macy) — and what remains after inescapable loss. For Bentley, the co-writer of last year’s poetic wonder “Sing Sing,” shooting at actual Washington locations from Spokane to Snoqualmie was critical to capturing this.
Sitting on a balcony overlooking Toronto during a bustling fall as “Train Dreams” made its strong festival run, he recounted how the little details of the production helped it go from being one of those special few films to shoot locally to one of 2025’s most acclaimed.
“There’s a verisimilitude I want to capture of the actual places, because there’s nothing more maddening when something is like, ‘This is set in Texas,’ and it looks nothing like Texas,” Bentley said. “Maybe a lot of people don’t notice, but I really care about it, so there were a lot of places that we talked about as options, but we always came back to filming in Washington state. The forests feel a very specific way that they don’t elsewhere, and I wanted to be true to the story.”
Bentley, who first fell in love with Johnson’s work reading “Train Dreams” upon its release in 2011, wanted to be loyal to the spirit of the book while also using the distinct visual language of film.
“(Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso and I) wanted to make the natural world its own force alongside these characters. The things that are happening in the natural world are no more or less important than what is happening in the human world and vice versa; they’re all wrapped up into one story,” Bentley said. “I didn’t want to make a film that was critiquing the amount of destruction of nature that is taking place for our idea of progress and then (destroy) nature in the (filmmaking) process.”
For “Train Dreams,” that meant all the trees that do fall were ones logging operations were already cutting down. All else was done via precise framing, seamless visual effects and plenty of painstaking production design. Yet just as important as these technical elements is the timeless thematic core the film cuts into.
“What spoke to me about Grainier’s story is that all of these things happen in his life, he goes through these incredible changes that he has no control over and can’t really make sense of, and yet he’s got an appreciation for it all, an acceptance of it by the end. I think that’s life. We’re much more at the mercy of fate than I think we think we are, especially as Americans,” Bentley said. “We lived through this very short golden age where we felt like we were outside of history. We were raised to think that maybe in some way we were untouchable by the world, and that’s just not true.”
Yet despite the inevitable impermanence that is inherent to being alive, “Train Dreams” comes back to the love Robert finds in life and the effect it can have on everything else.
“Love is the thing that can echo out from our lives across other people’s lives. I’m influenced by somebody, and then I pass that along. I share some wisdom that I got from somebody else that you’re never going to meet, yet you’re being impacted by them,” Bentley said. “Love is the legacy that we pass along.”
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