Netflix’s TRAIN DREAMS is one of the most underrated, beautiful films of the year. Based on the novella by Denis Johnson, the film follows Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) in a moving, emotional portrait of his adult life from the early 1900s to the late 1960s. From life’s love stories to its tragedies, its monotony to its conflict, the film is an exploration of the best and worst of America seen through the eyes of one man. Thanks to the spectacular cinematography of Adolpho Veloso, each frame of the film looks like it could be a postcard in itself. Veloso uses natural light to illuminate each shot, taking advantage of the gorgeous panoramas of the American West. It’s hard to believe this film was shot in 2025 because there is a beautiful nostalgia to the scenery and story that we don’t get to see on-screen very often.
It’s this beautifully rich cinematography, combined with a career-best performance from Joel Edgerton, that really makes this film soar. Edgerton is absolutely brilliant in this role, displaying a quiet, haunting stoicism that commands attention in each scene. His ability to convey so much with so little is the perfect accompaniment to an introspective film like this, which focuses more on showing instead of telling. And I think that is a reason I love it so much– writer/director Clint Bentley doesn’t feel the need to add a bunch of expositional dialogue to inform audiences of what’s going on. He uses the cinematic scenery and tremendous performances from Edgerton, and fellow actors William H. Macy, Felicity Jones, and Kerry Conden, to create an examination of one man’s life as it’s thrust into epic changes.
I first saw the film at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival and haven’t stopped thinking about it since. It’s one of those movies that will linger with you. So I was super excited to get a chance to interview many of the filmmakers responsible for the movie, including Clint Bentley, Adolpho Veloso, Joel Edgerton, and William H. Macy. I loved speaking to them about the difficulties shooting the film in natural light and how they may have impacted the performances, the element that Edgerton found most necessary to unlock his character, and so much more! Check out my interviews with the filmmakers below, which I compiled from two different interviews. And most importantly, make sure you check out TRAIN DREAMS, streaming on Netflix now!
First off, I loved the movie. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I saw it at TIFF. I feel like because of Joel’s more stoic performance, it sits with me a lot longer. And the cinematography was absolutely beautiful. And so, I was wondering, Clint, when you were writing the script, obviously this is based on a novel, what was the scene that you were most excited or nervous about bringing to the, to the screen?
Clint Bentley: That’s a great question. There’s two examples and it’s interesting about how iterative the film process is. One is there’s a moment in the book where young Grainier comes across this guy who’s dying in the woods. And in the end, he gives him a drink of water from his own boot. And there was just something about that scene where I was like… that was one of the scenes that made me want to make the movie. It doesn’t even fully end up in the movie because it didn’t quite work out just within the flow of the movie. But then the other one was when his daughter comes back to him as a little girl. That was one that…it’s the core of the movie in that scene and everything kind of comes together. I knew it would be difficult to do and then it was ten times more difficult than I thought it would be.
What made it so difficult?
Bentley: It’s just a really delicate… you’ve got this movie that’s on a certain trajectory, and then it kind of needs to go in another direction and pivot in another direction without feeling like a different movie. And then you’ve also got this really delicate dance with this moment that feels like, okay, is it real? Is it not? You’ve gotta toe this line where it can’t feel completely fake or a dream imagination, otherwise you lose the audience. It can’t feel completely straight ahead, otherwise you lose the audience. And then also, he describes what the child looks like so viscerally and beautifully in the book and just kind of perfect and haunting. And then once you try and put that in visual terms you just set yourself up for failure. And so it was just a lot of… everything about it was a tightrope. And luckily there’s a thing called editing in film, where you can save yourself.
Oh, I love that. Joel, I was talking about your brilliant performance. It’s the performance that has stuck with me most this year… just how you were able to keep so much of it internal, but still show so much in your performance. What was the piece that was most critical for you to unlock the character? Was it the book? Was it a particular scene in the movie?
Joel Edgerton: Well, I’ve spent… since I was a younger actor striving to…you know, how can I be something I’m not? Hiding behind characters and playing dress-ups and it was partly because the actors that really inspired me disappeared inside other characters. And yet on the flip side, I’ve also admired actors along the way who seem to not do that and just really expose their own nature, their own personality, their own sense of who they are and expose themselves. That latter aspect, I’ve admired it, but I’ve always avoided it and been a bit scared of it. I think partly because I don’t think I’m that fascinating or interesting without adorning it, myself, in some way. (laughs) But as I get older, I realized, and this speaks to the movie, that everybody is interesting. And so why not me? And this film really intersected with so much of what I’m going through at the moment as a new father.
A new father with all these new vulnerabilities and fears, and a husband and the joy that comes with that, but also the fears of what it would mean to lose them and those feelings, even though they haven’t happened to me, thank God, touch wood. They are thoughts I’ve had and that I’ve experienced in some way, particularly around the birth of my kids. So, I felt like Robert, even though I’m not a lumberjack, was so much of me. And then why be afraid of putting that on screen and trusting that? I really trusted Clint. So in many ways, the more emotional aspects of the film were tricky in that all it takes for me is to talk about the birth of my kids and I can hardly get the words out. So, on one hand, it was gonna be easy to access and not have to fly my imagination to somewhere it’s never been, but hard for the reason that they’re things you don’t really wanna think about. So, I guess the more emotional aspects of it, on one hand, were the most nerve-wracking on one hand, but I wasn’t worried about them. If anything, I was mainly worried about Robert becoming too expressive in those moments. Because I’m a little bit more expressive than him, I think.
Bentley: You are, in a good way. (everyone laughs)
Edgerton: But also trusting that there was this wonderful narration that was gonna occasionally kind of give the audience a key to unlock Robert’s thinking or push the story along and give us some clues as to what’s in this kind of very stoic, quiet man’s mind and journey.
Bentley: He had good instincts on it though, too. Just briefly to add… and I was thinking about this the other day. There were moments where we would do a scene, and it only happened a few times in the film, but I was like, “Is there anything else you wanna do? I feel good.” And we had played it a bit more like, like most of Grainier’s internal… And he’s like, “Why don’t I give you something bigger? And use it or not I don’t care.” And then we’d do that, and in all those instances except for one, that ended up being the thing that the scene needed in the edit. He got there and we used the bigger stuff…in a way that I didn’t think on set. I was like, “Yeah, we’ll do it, but probably won’t need it.”
Bigger for the character but not “bigger” than what you and I would be thinking in comparison?
Edgerton: Like four different kinds of light green (everyone laughs). But as an actor, I’ve always had that theory, and as a filmmaker certainly, that was reinforced. Options in the edit are [important]. You could think you’re doing the right thing, but if you look at the scene as its own entire story, you might think you suit what that micro-story is. But in the bigger picture of adding all the stories together, sometimes… like in an orchestra, you go, “Oh, we need more violins here,” or … “We need the big drums to boom here.” And sometimes, you don’t know that. As an actor, I just wanna go, “Hey, here’s a bunch of light greens. And maybe a turquoise. And do what you want with it.”
I’m glad you brought that up, Joel, because has your directing, and has the fact that you’ve done more on the filmmaking side impacted your acting? It sounds like it might have.
Edgerton: Only in that I hope that I’m more helpful on set knowing what parameters are and complications that can occur. I have a bigger appreciation for the entire machine, you know? I think actors sometimes, for example, don’t know how long the unit team has been there before you arrive and why your latte’s cold (laughs). So to understand that while you’re a very important part of it, you’re not the only important part of the entire village that’s making the thing. But I hope that I’m never intrusive in a presume to know better kind of way. If anything I get to sit in the passenger seat and see how other directors work. And not just how they work and what they do creatively and how they put their movie together, but how they conduct themselves, which I think is a very important part. The communication of actors with the crew and directors is a skill that the audience isn’t aware really benefits or hinders a film.
I bet. So I talked about how beautiful the film is. I feel like you could take any screenshot and it can be a postcard because it’s just so cinematic and beautiful. I really loved how you used natural light in so much of the scenes. But then thinking about things with my movie nerd brain, I was thinking that must have also been very difficult for you to shoot. Getting the lighting exactly right and for the actors, maybe having to wait for that perfect ray of light to come through. So what was the difficulty in trying to shoot with natural light? And then I’ll turn it over to the acting side.
Bentley: All of the kudos for this goes to Adolpho Veoloso, who’s just a master. And the funny thing is that those scenes… they’re beautifully framed and they seem… you would think that he’s like shaping so much light and everything. In reality, it’s him with the camera and he’s holding it on a rock or he’s sitting over it like this then we’re arranging the frame based on how the light is coming in. But the amazing thing is there’s not 10K over here and like three bounces over there and all these flags shaping light. It’s really finding a spot and him getting into it. Now part of that is because we shape production so that can happen, so we’re not shooting at two o’clock in the afternoon. We’re shooting when the light is really nice and then working really fast. And the only way you can do that is if you have a crew who gets behind it and really gets into it and actors who are not only excited about that, but also on top of their game… to where you can come in and and bring them in and we can rehearse a little bit and then sit there and wait.
I think a good example of that is the scene that Robert has on the fire tower with Kerry Condon. We started shooting that scene and the sunset’s really going down. We started shooting that scene and we started on Kerry’s side and it was just really harsh on her. The sun was still high where she’s doing this kind of squinting into the sun and we were like, “Let’s just chill for a minute. Let’s just stop, take a break.” We took, like, an hour break.
Edgerton: Yes, that’s right!
Bentley: We all stepped away and had some tea. We just gave the sun time to get down a little bit and then we went back and we did it. And you can’t have that freedom as a filmmaker if your cinematographer isn’t… if you’re not confident that they’re gonna get it. You also can’t do that as a filmmaker if your actors are like, “I don’t know. Should we back up? Should we talk?” And then you have a 30-minute conversation and you miss it. And on an independent film like this, we didn’t have an extra day. We didn’t have money for extra days or anything like that. And so it’s something I get very excited about it. It has its nerve-wracking moments where you’re like, “Oh, no! I don’t know if we’re getting this!” You can’t just stand around for 30 minutes because you have the light. You’ve got to get into it. But I think it just provides so much more magic than whatever difficulties it has. And part of that, again, is Adolfo… We can set up a scene one way and we’re gonna shoot it by the door and then we’re gonna go over there and blah, blah, blah. And then we’re working with kids and the kid decides to walk outside and we all can follow the kid. They’re good enough to improvise the scene with the kid and Adolpho’s good enough to just chase them around and yet it doesn’t feel sloppy at all. You get in the edit and you’re like, “That’s a beautiful image and that’s a beautiful image.” Adolpho is a photographer first. And I think that’s a big part of it. He’s a genius.
Mr. Macy, did you have to be more flexible in filming these scenes because of the cinematography?
William H. Macy: Yes. You read the script and you see the scene in your head and as you learn the lines, sort of figure out what the other actors will do, but when you get to the set it’s completely different. So for that treason, I think it’s important to learn the lines without any inflection. Don’t act them until the camera’s rolling. You get into line readings, which are the great white shark of acting. But you storyboarded the whole thing?
Adolpho Veloso: No. We had a lot of shots planned and a lot of the things in the movie are really well-planned shots. But a lot of it is improvisation and changing things last minute to also react to you guys or what was happening.
Macy: They moved quickly, though. From the time we got to the set and moved through the lines ones or twice, they were always ready to go. Those cameras are your friend too aren’t they? They can do anything… shoot in a coal mine (everyone laughs).
Veloso: But also we didn’t have a lot of time anyway, so we had to shoot quickly.
Again, this film is absolutely beautiful. Thank you for taking the time to speak to me!
