Robert Grainier never saved the world. He never even saw very much of it. But this thoughtful, melancholic movie tells us that his own world was filled with meaning. The movie, though, comes with its own unwanted content, including some sensual moments, scenes of violence and a bit of foul language.
We walk in a forest of stories.
We grow our own stories, day by day, year by year. The barista working at the corner coffee shop. The garbageman you see on Tuesdays. The panhandler at the highway exit. Moments shape and twist us like trees above timberline, our experiences growing limb and leaf and bark.
Our stories speak to our whos and wheres and whys. If we listen.
Robert Grainier’s own story began before the 20th Century did; he’s not exactly sure where or when. He was orphaned early on. How did his parents die? He never heard. But when he was 6 or 7, he moved to Bonners Ferry, Idaho.
He spent the next 80 years there.
His story is rooted in the Idaho forests, planted in the midst of its ancient trees. He cut down those trees season after season. He used those trees to build a home for his wife and child. He helped build bridges with them—bridges that carried trains and troubles, bridges that brought with them a bright, brittle future.
Robert Grainier’s life was unremarkable. He never saw the ocean, never bought a TV set, never amounted to much in most people’s eyes.
But his story? That is something else again.
Robert makes a mistake or two, but he seems like a good man. He cares deeply for his wife (Gladys) and daughter (Kate). Even though his life as a lumberjack takes him away from them for months at a time, you can almost feel his eagerness to get back home.
Gladys loves Robert as much as Robert loves her, and she loves it when Robert’s home. But when he’s gone, Gladys proves to be both a loving mother and resourceful homemaker, making more than due on their isolated acre in Idaho. She’s more of a dreamer and planner than her husband, too—farming, hunting, crafting fish traps and dreaming up ways that might allow Robert to stay home more.
We should also call out Ignatius Jack, a mercantile owner who steps in and helps Robert during an incredibly difficult time. Jack checks in on Robert, gives him a bit of extra food and, in one scene, appears to let Robert sleep in his store.
Robert meets a variety of folks in his line of work, and we’re introduced to “Apostle Frank,” a fast-talking logger who preaches as he saws. The movie’s narrator tells us that he “talked about the Bible with such authority, it was like he was there when it was all written down.” We hear him talk about Jacob and shout “Praise God!” a few times. The last time we see him, he’s clutching what would appear to be a Bible in his hands. Alas, we learn that Apostle Frank’s religiosity hid some much darker secrets.
Robert doesn’t appear to be all that religious. But he does meet Gladys in church. And even though he hadn’t been a regular churchgoer before, he begins to attend services regularly (to grow closer to his romantic interest).
At a funeral, a logger openly struggles with the untimely and, in his view, unfair death of a coworker. “God, I don’t know what meaning to take from that,” he says during the service, shortly before a prayer concludes in “Jesus’ name.”
Robert meets a newly hired forest superintendent, Claire Thompson, who talks about how the valley they live in was carved by glaciers. Claire says it must’ve felt like the end of the world to those who lived in the valley when the glaciers were moving through (never mind that that is a process that would’ve taken thousands, if not millions, of years). She suggests that religion-based flood stories all spring from the same basic root. “All those flood stories, all those different religions all over the world,” she says, “same story, different lens.” She then apologizes to Robert if she offended his own religious sensibilities.
But most of Train Dreams’ spirituality seems unmoored from any one religion. Robert is haunted by a sense of the supernatural: “Ghosts” or supernatural entities appear to visit Robert from time to time; dreams seem to presage the future. “Grainier worried more and more that something terrible was following him,” the narrator tells us, that something would claim his life soon. A comet appears in the sky, and we’re told that many believe that it foretells the “end of days.” (But when the comet goes away, it seems as though life continues on just fine.)
For some, the forest itself seems to have a supernatural energy. Arn, a wise but superstitious explosives expert who works one season with Robert, says that logging takes a spiritual toll on those who do it. “We cut down trees that have been here 500 years,” he says. “Upsets a man’s soul whether he recognizes it or not.”
Arn suggests that, in cutting down the forests, they’re participating in work they can’t understand. “This world is intricately stitched together, boys,” he says—stressing its connection with its creator. “Every thread we pull, we know not how it affects the design of things. We are but children on this earth, pulling bolts out of a Ferris wheel, thinking ourselves to be gods.”
When a logger dies, it’s tradition to tack their boots to the side of a tree. “Now they won’t just pass out of this world without nothing to show they was here,” the loggers are told. We hear some talk about a dream-reading “holy man” performing in a show.
Train Dreams sometimes hints at mythical, portentous happenings—such as the catch of a ludicrously large fish and the birth of a two-headed calf.
“I was thinking we oughtta get married,” Robert tells Gladys as they lounge on a blanket outside.
Gladys laughs. “We are married,” she says. “All we need now is a ceremony to prove it.”
That line might suggest that Robert and Gladys engaged in some physical intimacy before their vows were exchanged. But even if not, the film isn’t shy about their post-marriage activities. Gladys and Robert have sex one evening; while the camera never dips below the shoulder, subtle movement makes it quite clear what’s going on. In another, the two lie in bed, apparently naked (covered with blankets) as Gladys snakes a finger along Robert’s bare back and arm.
Robert drives a cart that carries women into the forest. We don’t hear what these women are up to, but the narrator says that Robert became acquainted with the “follies and endeavors of his neighbors.” We hear speculation on just what sort of canine might’ve fathered a particular litter of puppies. Robert takes a bath in a lake, and we see his exposed torso.
Most of Robert’s working life was spent as a logger. But he did work for a railroad crew one season. “He wished he never had,” the narrator tells us. During his stint there, as Robert sits on break with a Chinese worker (Fu Sheng, according to the credits), a handful of men grab Fu Sheng and drag him away. The Chinese man kicks one of his assailants. Then when Robert grabs for the man’s feet—presumably to try to pull Fu Sheng to safety—Fu Sheng gets the wrong impression and kicks him off, too. Robert only watches as the men carry Fu Sheng to the gorge-spanning bridge they’re all working on and throw him off, presumably killing him.
Logging can be dangerous work. Robert watches as a massive log tumbles down the side of a hill and slams into a pair of horses. (We don’t see the impact, but we do briefly see the injured horses struggling and screaming.) The log killed three men off camera, as well; Robert and others attend a funeral service for them. A large branch falls on another logger. The man is injured and ultimately dies from his injuries.
During a work break, a Black man shows up and asks the loggers if “Sam Lubbin” is in their midst. “I’ve been trying to find this man for a very long time to deliver a message to him,” the visitor says. When one of the loggers starts scrambling away, the visitor shoots him—then walks over to the injured man and shoots again. The visitor explains that the man shot his brother years ago because he was Black, and he invites the loggers to say now whether they take issue with what he just did. “I do not intend to spend the rest of my days looking over my shoulder,” he says.
Early in his life, Robert runs across a man dying from some sort of accident: He fills his boot with water and gives it to the man to drink, but he can do nothing else. A couple of characters shoot and kill game. Someone collapses in front of Robert’s cabin, suffering from a broken leg. Robert splints the injury, warning the victim that it’ll hurt. We hear about the forced, violent deportation of more than a hundred Chinese families near Bonner’s Ferry.
Robert has terrifying dreams that depict his cabin engulfed in flames, a sort of premonition of things to come. Later on, a fire indeed tears through the valley and destroys Robert’s tiny homestead. It’s implied that someone (possibly more than one someone) died in the fire. Another vision depicts a woman falling and injuring herself in the middle of the forest inferno.
One use of the s-word, and one use of the word “d–n.”
Characters smoke pipes.
Robert brings home two bottles of whiskey. Gladys quips that they’ll make a big dinner to go with the hooch. We see the couple with glasses of alcohol at other dinners, too.
There is evidence throughout the film of some racist attitudes, and it would sure seem like the death of Fu Shang was rooted in racism. We hear someone sarcastically insult the entire state of Kansas.
Robert gets sick and vomits.
A man sits, dying, in the middle of the forest.
“Beautiful, ain’t it?” he says.
“What is?” Robert asks.
“All of it,” the man says. “Every bit of it.”
Robert’s story is an example of that hard, brutal beauty.
Train Dreams takes us deep into that story—or, at least, as deep as a two-hour movie can take you. On the surface, we find a simple story about a simple man. He knows very few people. He loves even fewer. He spends much of his life alone, even when he has company. His entry into and exit from this world went with nary a whisper. No comets heralded his appearance, no earthquakes shook with his passing.
And yet, Train Dreams tells us that Robert Granier’s life was as rich and sweet and heartbreaking as any of ours might be—filled with dirt and dust and transcendent sky.
For such a simple story, Train Dreams does some powerful lifting. The movie takes us into a world of ghosts and portents that feel strangely grounded: It’s a rumination on guilt and meaning. And it’s the story of our ever-changing and, perhaps, our ever-breaking world. The axe gives way to the chainsaw. A technological marvel of a bridge is replaced with another just 10 years later. Robert struggles to keep up—just as we all do or all will.
Maybe we all feel a little like Robert sometimes, bewildered by the pace of the world and the meanness found in it. Sometimes in our own worlds—filled with the screaming needs of social media, the harsh buzz of modernity—we long for our own acre in the woods. Our own piece of paradise with family.
But Train Dreams reminds us that paradise can’t be kept on this cantankerous planet, and the film shows us some imperfections of its own. The world it unfurls for us contains some moments of intimacy (within a married context, but still something to be aware of if kids are in the room), staccato bursts of violence, a tiny bit of foul language and a difficult, searing look at despair. Robert’s life isn’t always pretty, and neither is this film.
But it can be beautiful, too—the hard, heartbreaking beauty of something that’s gone or something that never was. And the film reminds me to try to find the world’s beauty in everything around me—including the sometimes different, sometimes difficult, people in it.
When our own stories come to an end, every one of us will experience tragedy and loss. We will have suffered in our lives. We will have struggled through what felt like, at the time, unendurable pain. But I’d like to think that the last sentence we say, as we prepare to find our way to our perfect and holy Creator, would be simply this:
Beautiful, ain’t it?
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
