What makes a life worthy of examination on the big screen? It's a question I've found myself mulling over since watching Train Dreams, the new movie from Sing Sing duo Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar.
Because Train Dreams' central figure, Robert Grainer, is no one special. As portrayed by Joel Edgerton (Warrior, The Great Gatsby), Grainer is a logger whose peripatetic worklife has him felling trees across the Pacific Northwest as part of the railroad's cross-country expansion in the early 20th Century. One day, Grainer meets Gladys (Felicity Jones, Rogue One), and they start a family. The Grainers have a perfectly pleasant life together, until one day they don't, and Robert is left to live out the rest of his days in contemplative solitude, only occasionally crossing paths with similarly sorrowful individuals, like Kerry Condon's forest worker Claire.
