Train Dreams - 26 March 2026

Above: Train Dreams blurb.

TIMDT and Mwah (sic) watched the movie at home on 14 March 2026. Other than Conclave, the film is the only one of the ten "best picture" nominees for this year's Academy Awards that we watched. The winner for the best 2025 best picture award was Anora. I have no inclination to see Anora, unless its promoted, in my face, by one of the streaming services... and then, only if I am bored and can think of no other option.

I liked the setting of Train Dreams... northern Idaho and northeastern Washington... area through which I have motorcycled extensively. The period for the film was pre to post WWI.

Costumes, visuals, setting... all very authentic. Production quality was fine.

The film captures the life of Robert Grainier (played by Joel Edgerton) an orphan becomes railroad worker and logger, whose only happiness, a wife and a child, came in his 40's. His true happiness was short lived. Both wife and young daughter were killed in a forest fire at the family home while Grainier was away on a logging job. Grainier was a nobody in this character study. Grainier was a man of few words. Most scenes were narrated by the very recognizable (and slow talking westerner, appropriate for the movie) voice of Will Patton.

Of course, there was the very obligatory, but tiresome, Hollywood trope scene where we were all to be educated about the evils of white racism. White ruffians threw a Chinese worker off of a bridge. Grainier didn't participate in the racist incident... rather, he was puzzled by it. The incident was a recurring dream for the Grainier, so we film watchers weren't allowed to forget it.

I'll remember the movie, if for no other reason than its unusual subject matter and authentic production quality. But "best picture," nominee quality has descended a long way since Lawrence of Arabia (1963) and The Godfather (1972). William H. Macy had a cameo part in the film.