I finally watched Train Dreams
From the team that brought us "Sing Sing", a quiet, sad film with brilliant performances emerges. However, its place in the Best Picture lineup feels less secure.
I think the first inkling that we would have a problem was when I did my research – "based on the 2011 novella". Am I saying that adaptations of modern interpretations of the past are always bad? Heavens no. However, most of the Hollywood commissioning machine is currently deep in the quagmire of IP rights for books, and most of the books are quite modern, hardly-built-a-patina-at-the-library kind of modern. Page not yet yellow modern. Plus, the net of “adaptable material” seems to be expanding beyond what is reasonable for a quality film to be made, even.
This is where my analysis of this otherwise beautiful, lush film starts — this film spans the very tragic life of one man. In doing so, it uses his small scope of the world to tell you a little bit about America over the course of 80 years. Great premise — but each fragment it explores is underbaked. Especially when it engages with race, I can feel the (well-meaning) white guy trying to do Woke DEI history (which, you know what, you can have some as a little treat) — but each fragment of racial politics is as fleeting and fragile as sugar glass. Maybe this is harsh - maybe this film came out a few years too late, and we’re all past this kind of writing, and feel-good films about a white guy that feels super guilty about racism at the turn of the century are actually a vital part of the cinematic ecosystem.
What results from this necessary lack of detail — this is a story about this white guy, not the POC around him — is that the story just becomes relentlessly sad. Without levity, without lesson, without meaning. “But UMNIA,” you say, “perhaps that was the point? Grief is meaningless! Life is meaningless!”
Train Dreams is a quiet film about how life can be bafflingly tragic. Train Dreams asks the question “Why?” to an indifferent universe. Train Dreams is quiet, contained, incredibly beautiful, and doesn’t try to do too much.
Pair that with the NPC-esque way that Black, Asian, and Indigenous people circle around this man at key moments, and then zoom out with me — zoom out and look at the films we’ve been witness to in 2025, that are now heading to the halls of (American) greatness. Does a film like this — a shoo-in for Best Picture 2011 — win against Sinners? It’s simply not likely.
Barring some kind of freak decision (a la F1 nomination for Best Picture), this film is lost in a 2025 Indie Film docket filled with nuance, richness, and depth that Train Dreams fails to touch.
I do believe we should make art for its own sake. Tell stories and adaptations because we feel passionate about the material. I am not passionate about this material. If given the choice, I wouldn’t have made this film. This is a value statement, not a judgement — the film is gorgeous — and bygone.
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