With its meditative pace and sincere interest in moral questions, Clint Bentley\u2019s film of a rudderless man cutting down trees in Idaho\u2019s verdant vistas has the air of a Hollywood classic from another era<\/p>\n
Train Dreams is arguably the lowest-profile of all the Oscar best film nominees, and could have easily passed me by, destined instead to be lost in the sprawling Netflix library, if it weren\u2019t for a phone call with a friend last year. She had just watched one of last year\u2019s big films \u2013 which carried famous names, plenty of hype, and promised to generate lots of debate \u2013 and emerged feeling despondent about it as well as the state of cinema. It was a film that, like so many she had recently encountered, contained only empty provocations that amounted to nothing. \u201cI don\u2019t want to sound like a cliche,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I believe this was all better in the 1970s!\u201d Train Dreams was one of the few films of the year she had enjoyed.<\/p>\n
So I came into Train Dreams, Clint Bentley\u2019s adaptation of the Denis Johnson novella, with that idea in mind: that it was a thing out of step with our time and possibly better for it, too. Immediately, its use of a kindly voiced omniscient narrator recalled Hollywood classics of the late 20th century. Our voice of God drops us into Bonners Ferry, Idaho, in the early 1900s, to the life of Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), a man who drifts through his first two decades without much purpose before he falls in love with the free-spirited Gladys (Felicity Jones).<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/adddbd9993ba9e75356296685750cd8ef3ba93d0\/638_0_7723_6179\/master\/7723.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=58c99bf5ed09181532e83246467b21e8\" "\\"Why")
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