Train Dreams

”Beautiful, ain’t it? Just beautiful. All of it, every bit of it.” Train Dreams is a film that perfectly encapsulates everything I love about the craft. What an incredible picture. This is not only my favorite film of the year, but one of the best films I’ve watched in a long long time. One of the best of the decade. I mean… wow this was fucking beautiful in every sense of the word. I don’t even know if I have the words to describe what I just watched or why I loved it so much. It is so rare that I watch something that feels like it was tailored to me. Like it was made for me. A story told and shot in a way I fucking adore, lit, framed in a way that has me in awe in every single frame. Intricate blocking and composition, with thought behind every beautiful frame, the most gorgeous film of the year. Sharp, heavy-hitting dialogue that sticks with you.  You know how sometimes you can just tell you are going to love the movie you are about to watch? Right from the opening scene I felt it. I knew this was going to be incredibly good. I was immediately hooked. This is the first time in a long time I’ve seen a film that made me FEEL this much. This is what the movie does best. It made me feel so many emotions, it evokes so many emotions, and I’d argue that if you watch this film and don’t feel anything by the end, then I’m not sure you’re human. I think something is broken inside you. It has been a while since a movie moved me this much, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I was brought to tears when the credits rolled and I can’t really remember the last time I did that after watching a film. I haven’t been affected like this in so long. An emotional gut-punch. Joel Edgerton’s performance is genuinely incredible, easily my favorite of the year. It’s the kind of acting that makes you forget he’s acting. It’s subtle, authentic, and natural, and he delivers a career-defining performance here. I’ve always said that a good score is crucial in a film and can really help heighten scenes, evoke emotions, and complement the film, and I still stand by that. I’ve always been easily moved and influenced by music, it’s one of my weaknesses. There’s a violin track in this film that gets used a lot, and every time it plays, I just feel it deeply. It is easy to get critical about the lack of really good movies nowadays. Most films I have seen this year are just fine, some good but I think there are still lots of great, smaller, personal movies like this one, non-blockbusters. You just have to go out of your way to find them. They are usually films that I have rarely heard anyone talk about, seen any marketing for, or had a big theatrical release. Mostly, they are films I have to actively seek out rather than them finding me. And this film, I don’t know, it just gives me hope that there are still good, smaller, personal, more contained films that are not trying to be big blockbusters, are not trying to build a cinematic universe, are not trying to be overly pretentious, and are just a goddamn good film trying to tell an emotional story. A simple yet beautiful story about the life of a man burdened and haunted by grief, while grappling with the challenges of ordinary day-to-day life and simultaneously adapting to a new era of technological and societal advancements, struggling to understand and find his place in the world. His life is mundane and simple, but never to the point that the movie feels dull or monotonous. It’s calm and easygoing, rather than slow and boring. Some scenes utilize handheld camera work that partially reminds me of Emmanuel Lubezki’s work in The Revenant, with the natural, raw, fluid movement, wide-angle lens and the way it lets natural light shine through. The sun rising or setting, the way the light hits the scenery, there is a lot of that here, and that is what I really love about the visuals. It captures the natural beauty of the environments, the sunshine glaring on the camera, the sun setting and the beautiful colors it paints on the sky. I was so in love woth the cinematography and lighting is the night scenes, especially when they sat by a fire. It feels like the fire is the only thing lighting the scene. You can barely see anything else except the fire and the faces of the characters. The background becomes like a canvas, and the people are painted on top of it. I truly adore that. The cinematography here is incredible, and Adolpho Veloso did a tremendous job. It’s such a gorgeous film that utilizes the beauty and quiet of nature to its fullest. Letting gorgeous natural lighting from this beautiful earth do most of heavywork when it comes to the film looking this gorgeous thanks to shooting on beautiful REAL locations.  I just watched a little behind the scenes video where they talked about the cinematography, and they mentioned how much natural lighting they used, which is exactly what I noticed while watching the film. It is genuinely lovely to hear them explain it. They also talked about using a small camera and how that led to a lot of handheld shots, which is something I pointed out earlier. It is always nice to see behind the scenes stuff that goes into their thought process and decision making, and it is even nicer when you can actually notice the things they are talking about in the finished film. I could clearly see the choice to go with a lot of handheld cinematography and natural lighting. Look, I am usually really critical of Netflix because most of their films just are not good. I know they did not make this one, but they did distribute it, and I am glad they helped get it out there. I just really wish it had a theatrical release. I am so sick and tired of soulless blockbusters taking up most of the space in cinemas while films like this get shoved to streaming services. I would’ve loved to see this on the big screen. There’s this quote by Cinema Council that perfectly captures what I feel, and I genuinely couldn’t have said it better: “Sometimes you lose a bit of hope in the landscape of modern cinema. And then a film like Train Dreams comes along, lifts you up, and reignites that passion. A cinematic poem capturing a world evolving at a pace that felt almost unimaginable.”Thank you for this film, Clint Bentley. Whatever he does next, I’ll be there. Just found out that Clint Bentley was one of the writers of Sing Sing, another deeply emotional human film and one of my favorites of the decade so far. And Greg Kwedar, the director of Sing Sing, also produced Train Dreams and worked on the screenplay for it. These two guys have been killing it for the past two years.