Train Dreams

One emotion and it’s simply to cry. I can’t figure out if they’re tears of joy or sadness. This might have just been my movie of the year. The movie is so simple, yet so perfect. What does it mean to live? What does living truly mean? To me, it’s this movie. To make an honest living, come home to your beautiful wife and daughter. But with living, are we prepared to live with the price that comes with it? The price of feeling grief, contentment, love, happiness, sadness, loneliness everything life has to offer. To be happy, you must feel sadness. To love, you must feel hate. I love how the movie never confirms whether his wife and daughter are gone or alive. You feel what Robert feels: hope. Hope that they might come back, and that no matter how many steps forward you take, there’s always that lingering thought they might return. I genuinely hope I can have a beautiful wife and kids just like Robert. That’s the goal. That’s success not wealth or anything else. Robert may not have been the richest or the smartest, but he was, for damn sure, the richest. I thought the airplane montage would get me, but the last quote felt like a rip straight out of my chest: “Robert never used the telephone.” He had no one after they were gone. He just lived the rest of his life by himself, holding onto hope. So many quotes throughout the movie felt like a punch to the gut. “Hey, you better hold on to something.” This one hurts because he did hold on. He held on to the hope that his wife and daughter might have made it out and would return. He held on to the hope that someday he would understand his purpose. He held on to the job not one he loved, but one he had to do. He held on to his cabin. He held on to his dogs. Robert was filled with hope and held onto everything. “Beautiful, ain’t it?” Yes, it’s beautiful, Robert the life you lived, the woman you married, the child you both had together. The life you tried your best to build, just to see the smile on either of their faces. Random thoughts with zero cohesion. My mind’s racing, and it’s all because this movie was perfect. I need to sleep on it.