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It is popular in Hollywood Tax credits will follow them wherever they go, but it will never be an option for the “train dreams.”
When director Clint Bentley began the adaptation of Dennis Johnson’s 2011 novel, he knew the book’s setting of Idaho and Washington in the early 20th century would transport him. Pacific Northwest Forest. Johnson’s book is a small miracle: a slim and quiet story of the simple life of a logger and railroad worker named Robert Grenier. She is a small, almost limitless piece of a larger drama of the march of time and the inexorable claws of progress through an untamed landscape.
In researching “Train Dreams,” 40-year-old Bentley was finding it more difficult than ever to find the book’s old growth forests. If “Train Dreams” is about uncovering a forever lost American past, it was just as elusive for the film to locate it.
“When we were looking for locations, it turned out to be the purpose of the film,” says Bentley. “Those old trees are hard to find. There are protected areas where you can get to. We drove three hours north from Spokane to this grove of old trees near the Canadian border. You get there after a hike and it’s not that big of a stand of old trees. It’s some place they couldn’t get to.”
“Train Dreams,” meditative and radiant, seeks to highlight an ever-changing land on which Grenier works anonymously. It appears to be a slow time, but it is constantly in flux, with forests being cleared, railroads laid and lives sacrificed along the way.
Bentley says, “What’s beautiful about the book is that it feels like an elegy for a lost time. I wanted the film to feel that way.” “And I think a big part of it is that we look around and we see, ‘Oh, that was a forest, and now there’s a Costco.'”
Bentley’s film is opening in theaters before streaming on Netflix on November 21, but it’s loving audiences because it’s so completely un-Hollywood. Grenier, played by joel edgerton Doesn’t talk much in the film. He has not lived a heroic or particularly remarkable life. It’s more that life is happening to him.
“What attracted me was it was about the importance of what we would otherwise consider an unimportant life,” says Edgerton. “We go to the movies to see what we hope for ourselves, that we will be more active, in control, and heroic. But I think most of us are similar to Robert in that we are not in complete control of things in the world, and we absorb the world’s blows. We are not the controllers of our universe.”
Adapting a beloved favorite from 21st century literature
When “Train Dreams” first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival toronto film festival, Edgerton, Bentley and co-screenwriter Greg Quader gathered to discuss a film that inspires emotional reflection. Bentley and Quader, the writing-producing partners behind 2024’s “Sing Sing” and 2021’s “Jockey,” have shown a rare ability to craft contemporary American stories.
“We want to make our own stories out of dirt,” says Quader, 41.
Bentley and Quader write together but take turns directing. His screenplay “Sing Sing”, an acclaimed real-life prison drama inspired by former prison men, was Oscar nominated. (Clarence Macklin and John “Divine G” Whitfield were also credited as writers.)
Little is still known about the film adaptation of Johnson’s novel, first published in a 2002 issue of The Paris Review. It is harsh and insensitive. Grenier experiences tragedy. Their life is mostly difficult and remains a mystery to them. But it also includes small joys and moments of realization.
Over the years, “Train Dreams” has gone from an established cult favorite to an established classic, “an American epic writ small”, as one critic called it. In 2012, “Train Dreams” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. last year, the new York Times It was included in a list of the best books of the 21st century, praising how its soft-spoken protagonist “witnesses the real-time formation of a raw, unfulfilled nation.”
Edgerton read it when “Train Dreams” was published as a book, and inquired about adaptation rights. But he was taken away.
“I remember thinking there would be a great movie here, but what a hard job it would be,” says Edgerton. “The fear is how much you have to bend Dennis’s work and change it so much that it loses some of its beautiful elements. To put it on the screen, you might destroy the best of it.”
Years later, when Bentley and Quader began writing the adaptation, they proceeded cautiously, trying to stay true to the spirit of the book while reshaping it for the film. As he describes his reverence for the book (“The quality of the prose, you feel like you’re in the presence of greatness,” says Quader), Edgerton smiles.
“I just had this image of someone coming up to you guys and going, ‘Hey, can you restore this church for me?'” Edgerton says.
Filming in the shadow of giants
The way “Train Dreams” develops as a series of disjointed encounters, interspersed with narration and lyricism, has drawn comparisons to a Terrence Malick film. The film’s supporting cast includes Felicity Jones as Gladys, Grenier’s wife, William H. Macy as a well-traveled explosives expert, and Kerry Condon as a woman whom Grenier meets later in life. Like the book, the film slowly, subtly gathers a strength that you only fully realize in the film’s final, intense moments.
“Somebody said, ‘We’re going to light fires throughout this movie and we’re going to light it at the end of it,'” says Bentley.
“You just hope the matchbox doesn’t get wet,” Edgerton jokes.
But they were collectively confident that “Train Dreams” could get there. They knew that Johnson’s book contained recognizable truth.
“I felt like if I felt these things, someone else must have them too,” says Edgerton, who gives one of his finest performances with only a little dialogue. “And they will reach out to this film and see their love, their happiness in it and it may allow them to reflect on their loss and grief.”
There were just no words to go there. During shooting, the filmmakers felt dwarfed by the vastness of the Pacific Northwest wilderness around them. Grenier is often shown at the bottom of wide shots, with trees rising above. On their outdoor set, ancient stumps of large trees could also be seen.
“Just being in the presence of these trees stirs some deep part of your soul,” Quader. “And you can’t avoid it. You can do it blindly, but there’s still that latent pull towards that deeper question of the value of things.”