Pictured: Greg Kwendar (left) and Clint Bentley

Clint Bentley’s adaptation of Denis Johnson’s beloved novella Train Dreams is the moving portrait of Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker who leads a life of unexpected depth and beauty in the rapidly changing America of the early 20th century.

Train Dreams captures a time and place that are now long gone, and the people who built a bridge to a future they could only dream of. Directed by Academy Award nominee Clint Bentley with a screenplay by
Bentley and Academy Award nominee Greg Kwedar, the writing team behind Sing Sing.

Train Dreams is the moving portrait of Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), whose life unfolds during an era of unprecedented change in early 20th-century America. Orphaned at a young age, Robert grows into adulthood among the towering forests of the Pacific Northwest, where he helps expand the nation’s railroad empire alongside men as unforgettable as the landscapes they inhabit. After a tender courtship, he marries Gladys (Felicity Jones) and they build a home together, though his work often takes him far from her and their young daughter. When his life takes an unexpected turn, Robert finds beauty, brutality, and newfound meaning in the forests and trees he has felled.

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In conversation with Clint Bentley, director and co-writer

What would you say Train Dreams is about?

CLINT BENTLEY: Train Dreams is based on the novella by Denis Johnson and tells the story of Robert Grainier, a logger and itinerant laborer who lives in the Pacific Northwest in the first part of the 20th century. It tells the story of his life as the world completely changes around him and life changes from a very agrarian one to something more industrialized and modern. He ends up becoming a relic of the past, even within his own lifetime, and we see him reckon with loss and love in all aspects of his life.

You co-wrote this film with Greg Kwedar. What was that process like? How does your creative partnership with Greg work?

BENTLEY: Greg and I have been working together now for about 15 years, and we’ve written many scripts together. This one was unique because we had never adapted a work of fiction before. We try to bring a deep level of research to what we do, and this film was no different, but it’s hard to research something that’s about a time gone by, and also based on a work of fiction.
We went up to the area where Denis Johnson had lived and where the story is set while we were writing, and stayed in a cabin along the Moyea river where Grainier would’ve lived. We met loggers in that area and people whose parents and grandparents had been loggers.
The Kootenai tribe there is reintroducing sturgeon into the rivers. It was a really unique writing process and really rewarding. I wanted to make sure that we were completely loyal to the spirit of the book that Denis had written, but also let the adaptation take its own path to become the movie that it needed to be. It was a constant exploration of trying to find what that balance was. I read the book five or six
times, really trying to internalise it, and then I left it behind to let the script evolve into the story I wanted to tell.

What was it like adapting this text to film?

BENTLEY: The challenges and the exciting aspects of translating the book to film were kind of one and the same. It’s a really slim book and yet it covers an entire life — and it covers a very specific time in the world. A period of great change. It’s a book structured around memories and it’s kind of all over the place. Trying to retain that spirit of the book and fit that into a structure that can work in a film without losing the aspects and the qualities of it that are really charming and are really special — some of the wooliness of it and the strangeness of it — was always the challenge, but that was also the excitement. It was a constant push and pull of needing to give the story a shape so that it would work as a film — and work as a film that wasn’t six hours long — but then also not put too much of a structure on it to where it lost the narrative freedom the book has that’s so beautiful. It was a process of discovery and of trying and failing at different things to find how to do that. I knew I wanted to capture this feeling of time going by very quickly, but also wanting to find space to settle into moments that are really special in Robert Grainier’s life. One thing I really wanted to get across was how quickly time goes by but also how these little fleeting moments come to define our lives. So finding that balance between letting the film flow and letting the story flow, but also spending time in those special moments was a journey.

Train Dreams is ostensibly a story about one man, Robert Grainier, but it truly contains a multitude of stories — of love, of tragedy, ghosts, machines, solitude, and connection. How do you work to convey that onscreen?

BENTLEY: Robert Grainier doesn’t do anything that really alters the course of history. He doesn’t fight in some great battle or create some invention that changes people’s lives, and yet he lives a very deep and rich life. I think that’s what always really attracted me about telling that story. It reminded me of a lot of people in my family and in my life.
Most of us will never have some great impact on history, and yet we lead very, very deep and beautiful lives in the process. There’s something very special about his story in that it is so specific to this one person’s life, and yet there’s a universality to it of a person trying to navigate a world that’s changing around you constantly, and ultimately leaving you behind even as you’re still alive. I think that’s as true today as it was in the early part of the 20th century when the story takes place.

The film also centers on a pivotal time in both the United States and the entire world, when technology and industry were advancing at an unprecedented pace, changing life as it was once known. What about capturing that era appealed most to you?

BENTLEY: I never really set out to make a period piece. What felt so interesting to me about this story is that even though it is set in the past, it feels so relevant to so many things that we’re going through today. Robert Grainier kind of becomes a relic of another time, even while he is still alive. He doesn’t understand the technology that’s around him. He gets left behind by modernity. And I feel like that’s something we’re struggling with today with the rise of so many different technologies. The world seems to be going through seismic changes every 10-15 years. There’s also the fact that we’re grappling with the effects of how much we’re taking from the world and how much we’re taking from the environment in order to fuel progress and a never-ending race to modernity. And that’s something that’s explored in this story from the early 1900s that we’re contending with even more today.
We just take for granted a lot of the more harmful aspects that come with modernity and progress, and
we don’t really think about the people who are left behind or displaced by these technological advancements. We don’t often think about all the countless people who are the workers and the
laborers — the literal hands that build these things — and who are so often forgotten after these grand
endeavors are completed. That resonated with me, not only with Robert Grainier’s story, but there’s a
few different characters within Train Dreams who are working on these big endeavors within the
context of westward expansion, and who will be forgotten by the end of it.

Much like Robert Grainier, the film is rooted in the Pacific Northwest. Can you talk a little bit about the power of that environment and its importance to this story?

BENTLEY: The Pacific Northwest was thought of — within the context of this idea of Westward expansion — as being the last frontier, the last part of the country that America would expand into. Of course, displacing people along the way who had been there for generations. A big part of that was cutting down all these old-growth trees in order to fuel the growth of this country and fuel the wars we were participating in. What I wanted to show with this story was that something was lost along the way. It’s not even always something you can quite put your finger on, but you do lose something intrinsic to the fabric of existence when you lose all those big trees. I think it’s still a very urgent question worth asking of how we’re using natural resources and how we’re pulling from natural resources in order to fuel growth, and what the cost of that is in the end.

Joel Edgerton’s portrayal of Robert Grainier is one of both sensitivity and strength. How did he get involved with the project, and what was it like working with him?

BENTLEY: I’ve been a fan of Joel’s for so long. He’s just an amazing actor, and a brilliant filmmaker and
storyteller on top of that. I’m always struck by the profound subtlety of his performances. How he can do so much with so little. With just a look he can be menacing or sweet or completely break your heart.
He was the perfect fit to play Robert Grainier. Grainier is a man of few words, he’s a quiet person, and yet he’s a person of deep feelings and deep thoughts about the world. And I knew Joel would be able to bring the character to life in a way that was true and yet I never expected the depths that he would reveal about the character.
It was such a joy working with him. I endeavored to shoot in such a way that followed the script and yet also incorporated found moments through improv and evolved based on what the world was giving us in the moment and he was always so game to follow that wherever it took us. He always expanded those
moments into something richer and deeper. He was an amazing creative partner in making the film.
The whole film is set decades in the past but many of the themes are still incredibly present today.

Can you talk about some of those themes and why they still matter?

BENTLEY: I’ve spoken about the aspects of the film about our lives and about the environment. It’s also a story about how we move past grief and how we pick up the pieces of our lives and move forward, even when we’ve gone through something really tragic. Greg and I were writing this film during the pandemic, and then I was making the film in the aftermath of that. So many of us are still contending with the fact that life has changed irrevocably, in more ways that we can contend with at times. And honestly it doesn’t always make sense in the ways that it’s changed. And yet, how do you move on? How do you pick up the pieces and keep going?
This story of Robert Grainier and what he goes through is a really resonant exploration of that. I think at the end of the day, I hope it’s a reminder that life is worth living. With all of the beauty and the sadness and the darkness and the light that we encounter, it’s all worth it in the end for the experience of it.

In conversation with co-writer Greg Kwedar

What was your first introduction to this project? Were you a fan of Denis Johnson?

GREG KWEDAR: I actually was not familiar with Denis’s work prior to engaging with the project — really only tangentially, just because I knew that he was one of Clint’s all-time favorite authors, and I knew that Train Dreams was a particularly salient piece for him. But I had never read it until he was exploring whether to step into what is ultimately a very daunting proposition — to try and adapt not just Denis Johnson, but to adapt this particular work. My memory of that first reading was, first and foremost, I was just like, “This is Clint. This is so Clint.”

What is it like collaborating with Clint?

KWEDAR: We’ve been working together for almost 15 years and have had this unique relationship where we’ve written four movies together at this point, but we’re also distinct directors. And so when one of us is directing, the other often takes on this supportive capacity to be along for a ride that maybe we weren’t designed to be the director of.
But you get this first-row seat into your best friend’s creative process, to see them bring something to life
and to be there to help them realize their dreams in whatever ways that you need to show up for.
I think that has been the gift of our lasting partnership, because we’ve told stories in what we say is a community-driven approach to filmmaking, where we care a lot about the community that a movie is set within. It’s never a transactional experience, but an exchange. We care about the community of artists that we work around. And I think the reason that’s such a priority for us is we’ve had to nurture a community of two for so long and to be aware of navigating that friendship and partnership and putting forward a collective goal over individual needs. I think that’s been a very special part of how we’ve worked together.

Is there a consistent theme running through the projects you work on together?

KWEDAR: Something that has stretched across our body of work and has really been a guiding force is that in the very beginning of our collaborative working relationship we wrote a mission statement, which was to tell stories of human connection in impossible places. It was just an instinct then — a powerful one, but it wasn’t tested. Now we’ve made four films and it’s become even more vibrant and urgent with time. As we mature in the world as people and as we look at work that is created, I’ve become more and more committed to tell stories of hard-won optimism. About people that face immense heartache, difficulty, and sadness, but who ascend to a place of belief in each other, compassion, love, care, beauty. These things can transcend any form of hardship.

What was the actual process of adapting the book?

KWEDAR: The first thing I did was I read it for my own joy and just experienced the book. The things I remember the most that I wrote down at the end were like, “Oh, this is a book about language in a
way, the language of working men, the language of love, the language of sadness, the language of
solitude, the language of community.” Our job was just to study that as closely as we could. Then the
next thing we did, and part of our process, was to read the book with a pen, and underline anything
resonant — it didn’t matter if it was just prose, or dialogue, or moments. It ended up that most of the
book was underlined.
Then it was just pulling everything that was underlined and resonant into our working document. Then it was just starting to look at it like: “OK, here it all is. What is the task here?” So much of our work has been almost like being journalists in the films that we’d done prior to Train Dreams, and that involved getting out into the field. Now it was: “How can you bring that journalistic process into a [fictional] text?”
[We realized], OK, the job here is to get underneath these words, sometimes get in between them,
sometimes go beyond them, and to identify across the work where those opportunities were. And then
also [to ask ourselves], “Where are the moments where we just need to be purely faithful and almost
directly translate what was written onto the screen?”

What are your most prominent memories of doing this work?

KWEDAR: My personal favorite part of the process was when we decided to actually go out into the field ourselves. We went to Bonners Ferry, Idaho. Clint and I would just drive the roads and be in the presence of those great trees and those endless vistas. And we were listening to the audiobook of Train Dreams for the first time, which is narrated by Will Patton [who is also Narrator in the film].
We’d just listen to the words in the reality of the natural setting that it was written within. We also stayed in a cabin on the Moyie River, which is also a significant part of the setting in the book, and it’s also the same road and riverside that Denis and [his wife] Cindy Lee lived on when they were based in Bonners Ferry. And so we were writing, looking out upon the same water that he did while he was writing the book.
It was a very pivotal moment for us to be able to feel the place, to have it come alive in 3D around us, and
to access all the senses of what the book was communicating and to see it through our own eyes and to feel it and to feel those textures and nuances.
We finished our first draft while we were there. There was that moment where you’re having these indelible experiences and you’re trying to translate that to the page and then you read it back and it’s
just like, “It’s not quite what we just lived.” It still felt shaggy … We didn’t have clarity of focus. And so
whatever elation we were feeling during the trip hit a quick crash-down.
And then the next big moment for us was detaching that feeling of having to minutely protect every
aspect of the original text. That was the moment where we finally just let ourselves be free and to be guided by Clint’s directorial vision. Then it was paring back and letting things fall away and just letting only what felt like lived up to the standard of the book originally, but in our form, into the screen form. That’s when it finally clicked, and we found it. After that, it’s just the constant tinkering, but its soul was apparent finally at that moment. We knew we had a movie.

© 2025 BBP Train Dreams. LLC. / Netflix