“There were once passage ways to the old world: strange trails, hidden paths. You'd turn a corner and suddenly find yourself face-to-face with the great mystery, the foundation of all things. And even though that old world is gone now, even though it's been rolled up like a scroll and put somewhere, you can still feel the echo of it.”
- Narrator/Train Dreams
I had been seeing the movie, Train Dreams, mentioned in different places recently and I got around to watching it last night. It cast a spell on me. I can't stop thinking about it, so I will pour out a few things here so I can talk of its beauty.
Train Dreams is a quiet story about a man named Robert Grainier. He is an ordinary man living an unremarkable life in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the Twentieth Century. He works in the world of logging and the building of the railroad - hard and dangerous manual labor. We follow him through his life and his experiences with the beauty and unforgiving natural world that he works and lives in, the weight of time passing and the changes in his own life and the world around him.
I don't want to say any more about the story. If you choose to watch it, I'd like for you to experience it without knowing any of the particulars. As best I can, I'll say the following about what so captivated me about it.
First off, visually, it is a stunningly beautiful film. The cinematography is astonishing. I'm not literate enough about the craft to explain it, I just know it affected me deeply. I heard it described as “visual poetry” and I can't think of any better way to say it.
Through the quiet observation of this one man's life, the movie is a meditation on many things: solitude, love, debilitating loss, grief, the randomness and interconnectedness of our world. It's about the people who pass through our lives, the grace of ordinary things, the way we are affected by change and how in the face of almost crippling despair, we have to keep going, keep moving forward in life. For me, it is a deeply spiritual film and one I will relish seeing for a second time.
It is based on a novella of the same title by Denis Johnson. I have purchased it to read. The language in the film, taken from the book I'm assuming, is simple and beautiful. It reminds me in a way of the style used by Charles Frazier in Cold Mountain and Charles Portis in True Grit.
A caveat: I learned a hard lesson many years ago. It used to be, when I was enraptured by a movie, I was fervent about encouraging anyone and everyone to see it. Turns out, not everybody shares my taste in film. Blue Velvet and Shortcuts almost cost me some friends. I'm more judicious now.
If you're a person who must have hyper-stimulation from a movie, superheroes, car chases, explosions, gunfire, body counts, this one may not be for you. This movie is contemplative, understated…patient…something we as a culture could use a lot more of.
It's on Netflix: