Train Dreams

This adaptation of Denis Johnson's 2011 novella is the sophomore directorial effort of Clint Bentley, who, with his creative partner Greg Kwedar, wrote and produced Transpecos and Sing Sing, both directed by Kwedar, and Jockey, directed by Bentley. The film follows the eighty-year life of a quiet logger who witnesses both incredible beauty and brutal ugliness, and experiences powerful love and great personal loss, becoming a part of the random and intentional changes that occurred in early 20th-century America.

Like Jockey, this is a meditative movie, light on narrative and heavy on imagery. But where Jockey was made up of the kind of images I couldn't help thinking any halfway decent person with a digital camera could catch if they got up early enough, Train Dreams is effectively immersive. It invites you into its vision of the past with a lush, colorful pictorial presentation of the Pacific Northwest, accompanied by a sonorous voiceover by Will Patton.

Movies told through wall-to-wall narration, showcasing beautiful photography without much narrative development, are not my cup of tea, but this one worked for me. Train Dreams is somewhat reminiscent of Days of Heaven, but it's less visually striking and less pretentious. It has a slightly soporific quality that lulls you into a semi-liminal state, which helps facilitate the transformation and is fitting, though ironic, for the title. Joe Egerton stars as the soft-spoken Robert Grainier, and Felicity Jones plays his wife Gladys. The supporting cast features brief but memorable turns by Kerry Condon and William H. Macy.

Unfortunately, this is a Netflix release, which means it'll barely play in theaters, and even when it does, it's shot in the unforgivable aspect ratio of 1.50:1, a frame size optimal for iPad viewing. Train Dreams will absolutely suck when watched on an iPad. When a filmmaker chooses to shoot in this aspect ratio, they are basically saying, "I don't give a shit what my movie looks like in a cinema," because 90% of all movie theaters that play this will not mask the image. Even the few cinemas that actually still care about masking may not be able to properly mask for a 1.50:1 movie. Thus, the beautiful imagery will have to compete with the glare from the light emanating from the "black" bars of the letterboxing, pillarboxing, or both. I was fortunate enough to see this in an art house theater that did properly mask the screen, but I bet that experience is going to be extremely rare for most viewers of this picture, and it's a pity. The chosen aspect ratio kind of shoots the movie in the foot.