This review was originally published on January 31, 2025 out of the Sundance Film Festival. Train Dreams is now streaming on Netflix.

“There were once passageways to the old world,” a voiceover intones at the beginning of Train Dreams . “You’d turn a corner and find yourself faced with a great mystery.” As the narration (spoken by Will Patton) continues, we see tunnels, forests, a pair of boots nestled in a tree trunk — almost like they grew there — and a giant spruce slowly crashing to the ground. In telling the seemingly unremarkable life story of one ordinary man, Clint Bentley’s trancelike film, based on Denis Johnson’s acclaimed 2012 novella, ruminates on the interconnectedness of all things, but it wears its metaphysics lightly. It mimics the process of revelation itself, as the

See Full Page