Train Dreams

This week’s pick is Train Dreams: a quiet, meditative Netflix drama adapted from Denis Johnson’s novella, following the life of Robert Grainer (Joel Edgerton) — a logger and railroad worker drifting through early 20th-century America. It’s the kind of film that feels like a memory: sparse dialogue, heavy atmosphere, and a sense of time moving faster than any one person can keep up with.The opening sets the tone immediately: rail tracks, a tunnel, Will Patton’s voiceover, and an image that pays off later — boots nailed to a tree, slowly swallowed by nature. From there it’s a whole life in fragments: brutal work camps, quiet domestic joy, sudden violence, and the long, haunted aftermath of loss.What we talked aboutA “Western” that isn’t really a Western — frontier vibes at first, then you realise you’re watching the world modernise around one man who can’t.Work as a lifetime trap: logging season, railroad labour, the “build it for someone else” feeling, and the way corporations just roll on regardless.The Chinese labour thread and the early sequence where a Chinese worker is taken and thrown from the bridge — and how that moment sits with Grainer for decades.William H. Macy as the old explosives guy: funny, weary, and then brutally, pointlessly lost.The wildfire: Grainer racing home, the cabin gone, wife and daughter gone off-screen — and the film refusing to give closure, so you feel the same unresolved grief he does.The recurring motif of time erasing everything: the boots, the forest reclaiming, bridges made obsolete, progress moving on without sentiment.The late-film whiplash into modernity: Grainer seeing spaceflight on a shop-window TV, then taking a plane ride — an old man briefly touching the future.Nick Cave over the end credits, and how the score and natural lighting carry the whole thing.VerdictA beautifully shot, melancholy life-story film: quiet, heavy, and surprisingly moving. Joel Edgerton is superb, and the movie’s best trick is making the audience feel the scale of time — and the smallness of one person inside it.Strong recommend, especially if you’re in the mood for something reflective rather than plot-driven.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at [email protected] or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads