Train Dreams

The story of a man who was never blessed with fortune or circumstance, never got that big break, never found his purpose, never even really found a state of contentness. A man who kept waiting for his life to truly come into focus.   Although only a brief addition to the start of the film, I feel the explanation of Robert’s semi-orphaned childhood is a catalyst for his character. Raised without structure and support, he drifts into an aimless adulthood with nothing for his emotions to fall back on in times of hardship, nothing to reiterate his self-worth beyond his circumstance. We see this play out first with the weight of his Asian coworker’s death on Robert’s psyche, then the earth-shattering killing of his wife and daughter in the wildfire. Both, but especially the latter, weigh him down for the remainder of his life, the irrational hope of return a self-imposed prison of the mind.  Robert is a good soul but with an incomplete heart that’s incapable of loving himself. As he moves through time, the waves of a changing world can deteriorate his growth with ease. A man who was never given a start and had the only one he found taken away from him.