We all have a natural desire to find an identity for ourselves. Work, family, interests, hobbies, beliefs, values – there are many things that we could see as giving our lives meaning, and it can change over the course of our lives. But when we don’t have a strong sense of our purpose and identity, we feel adrift.
Train Dreams is a movie about grief, but more so it is a movie about identity. A young orphan, Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), floats through life without purpose until he meets Gladys (Felicity Jones) and starts a family. He is a logger by trade, so he spends months away from Gladys and their daughter Kate, always longing to be back home and with his family. Then Gladys and Kate die in a forest fire while Robert is away. He must learn to cope with the loss while finding meaning in his life again.
Robert meets a woman, Claire (Kerry Condon), who is also grieving the loss of her spouse. Claire ends a conversation remarking that they are both “just waiting to see what we’ve been left here for.” Robert has lost not just his family and the two people he loves most in the world, but also his reason for existence. Everything he had been working towards was centered around his family; his work with the logging company was simply a means to an end. Now he has nothing.
Train Dreams takes place over an extended period of time, showing the whole arc of Robert’s life. Unsurprisingly, he never really gets over the loss of Gladys and Kate. He has flashbacks and visions of them – a hole in his life that will never fill itself. He is unable to keep up on the logging crew, and finds a different job that suits him well enough. But he never really finds the same sense of purpose he had when he had a family.
And maybe that’s okay. Maybe each of us contributes to the grand tapestry of humanity in our own way, whether we recognize it or not. And maybe a life doesn’t need a single purpose to be fulfilling in the little moments.
Humans also share the earth with many other living things, a fact that Train Dreams is acutely aware of. Early in the film, we see a tree being felled from the perspective of the tree. The loggers discuss the fact that the trees have been there for hundreds of years, and that the work of cutting them down can take a toll on a man’s soul. The forests and logging activities are captured with creativity and gusto. There is a natural beauty to the cinematography and the pastoral locations chosen, which give real weight to the movie’s exploration of the ways that humans are invading and exploiting them.
The movie is tied together by a third-party narrator who describes Robert’s life and thought process throughout the film. Robert is a quiet man, so this omniscient approach allows us some insight into his interiority that we may otherwise be guessing at. The narration suits the film well; there is enough visual poetry to balance out the prose of the narration, which is often beautifully phrased. The film is based on a novella and opts to simplify rather than expand, resulting in a sparse plot that allows the film to unfold at a leisurely pace with plenty of room for reflection.
And the themes of purpose and loss are worth reflecting upon. Identity is vitally important on a personal level, but viewing ourselves from 10,000 feet up can give us a different perspective. Progress is made, people are born and die, and the giant interlocking puzzles of culture and society continue to evolve. The world goes on regardless of our ability to find our place in it.
