{"id":303409,"date":"2025-10-14T19:28:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T19:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/303409\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T19:28:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T19:28:13","slug":"joel-edgerton-and-felicity-jones-on-clint-bentley-gem-train-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/303409\/","title":{"rendered":"Joel Edgerton And Felicity Jones On Clint Bentley Gem ‘Train Dreams’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t
The director Clint Bentley<\/a> (Jockey, Sing Sing) was chatting about his film\u00a0Train Dreams<\/a>\u00a0that\u2019s been playing at the BFI London Film Festival<\/a>. It\u2019s based on a novella by Denis Johnson that first appeared in The Paris Review in 2002, and stars Joel Edgerton<\/a> as fictional character Robert Grainier, one of the men and women who helped fire up America and ushered it into the industrial age.<\/p>\n

\n\tGrainier\u2018s an itinerant lumber man who worked the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the 20th century, felling timber and building railroads. The story felt, Bentley suggests, \u201clike an elegy for a lost world and a lost time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI know exactly what he means. Interestingly, people at Netflix<\/a> weren\u2019t kind of herding me to see it. Every now and again there would be an email gently reminding me of screenings. I liked the fact that I wasn\u2019t being hit over the head with it. People have to discover\u00a0Train Dreams\u00a0for themselves.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen, Ashley Schlaifer, one of the producers, approached me during Deadline\u2019s recent Contenders London, and quietly mentioned the film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI went to a screening and it caught me totally unawares. As the closing credits rolled, Finola Dwyer (Brooklyn, An Education), who happened to be seated next to me, looked over, but neither of us could speak. Although, a little later, I was able to mumble, this is a\u00a0great\u00a0movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTRAIN DREAMS \u2013 (Pictured) Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier. Cr: Netflix \u00a9 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film also stars Felicity Jones<\/a>, as Gladys, the woman who proposes to Grainier when she meets him at church. William H. Macy, Kerry Condon, Clifton Collins Jr. and Alfred Hsing are also in the film.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBentley read the short story when it was published in book form in 2014. \u201cIt started my love of Denis Johnson and I read all of his stuff after that, but I never would\u2019ve thought to make it into a movie. It wasn\u2019t one that I thought, \u2018One day I\u2019ll make it.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0And then I made Jockey, my first film, and some producers had the rights of this book, Marissa McMahon and her team, and they saw\u00a0Jockey\u00a0and were like, \u2018Oh, we\u2019ve been looking for a filmmaker.\u2019 So they asked me to adapt it [with Greg Kwedar], and I read it again with that in mind and just fell in love all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier, during\u00a0a conversation with Josie Rourke, the film and stage director,\u00a0Bentley marveled\u00a0that for such a slim book, \u201cit\u2019s so capacious.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPlus, Bentley and others have been struck by the universality of the story. Adolpho Veloso, the film\u2019s cinematographer who was raised in Brazil and now resides in Portugal, was sent the\u00a0script and connected to it immediately. \u201cThat really surprised me,\u201d says Bentley. \u201cHe found something in the story that spoke to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWe both agreed that we humans have screwed the planet, to our own detriment.<\/p>\n

\n\tBentley observes that every part of our life makes us feel very apart from nature. The filmmaker says that the wood cabin the production design team built was such that \u201cyou could have moved in and lived there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it was cold outside, \u201cwe all had to put on jackets and start a little fire. When it was hot outside, we opened the doors and windows; and when I got back home, and if I\u2019m hot or cold, I just press a button on the wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd it\u2019s not as if we\u2019re bad people\u00a0or anything, Bentley\u00a0\u00a0insists, \u201cbut just our disconnection from nature\u201d and how technology has \u201cspoiled us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps, he adds, if we can just remember how interconnected we are to nature, then \u201cthe better off we\u2019ll all be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tClint Bentley. Baz Bamigboye\/Deadline<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was tough to find a lead actor who could age convincingly \u2014 up and down \u2014 be very stoic, who can do physical heavy lifting and know his way around a saw and know what to do with a bag of nails and a hammer \u201cand also be very sweet\u201d and look as if he knew how to get his hands dirty.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was good to have a conversation with Edgerton. He and I met over 20 years ago when he was on location with Chiwetel Ejiofor filming\u00a0Kinky Boots\u00a0for director Julian Jarrold at the end of the pier in Clacton on Sea, on the Essex coast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe says that so many of the movies he reads \u2014\u00a0and that we watch \u2014\u00a0\u00a0are about an active protagonist racing against time to save the world or rescue somebody or get their family back.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t(L\/R) Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso, Joel Edgerton and composer Bryce Dessner. Baz Bamigboye\/Deadline<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe go to the cinema to sit in the passenger seat of a life we wish we might have, or a heroism we wish we might possess. We also know that we also like to see ourselves reflected on the screen. And most of us, I think, lead lives where we\u2019re not in control, not the rescuers of things, we\u2019re not saving the planet. We feel like the planet is pushing us around and we\u2019re at the behest of events around us, and we\u2019re lucky if we fall in love and all these wonderful things. And we know that the cost of that is that we might lose things if we care about them. And so I think through Robert, my character, there\u2019s a chance for audiences to see something of themselves. I think more than 90 percent of us are not holding the reins of life, but what Clint has done\u2026 through this sort of\u00a0series of snapshot shots of an entire life, is to then ask these bigger questions too about what does it all mean and is it all worth it. And I think it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tComing from Australia, as Edgerton does, is not dissimilar to those characters in the Pacific Northwest. There\u2019s a durability to the modern Australian character as well, he notes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEdgerton\u2019s forebears, his grandfather and great-grandfather, hail from Wagga Wagga in New South Wales and they used to be sheep farmers. Once electric trains became a thing, his grandfather became a train driver. \u201cI have this sort of feeling like my family line, they\u2019re all working men until my father, and then I went into a more kind of cerebral space. But I love this kind of movie. I always want to\u00a0feel like I\u2019m doing something more capable and it feels comfortable to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn fact, as I watched the movie, I got the\u00a0\u00a0sense that Edgerton was perfectly at home working the earth; the role, I thought, was in his blood. It\u2019s rare that I\u2019ve seen an artist appear so suited to a part, where they\u2019re not even, seemingly,\u00a0acting.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTRAIN DREAMS \u2013 (L-R) Felicity Jones as Gladys and Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier. Cr: Netflix \u00a9 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tEdgerton chuckles and says that he\u2019d much rather shoot a movie like\u00a0Train Dreams\u00a0\u201cthan be a corporate guy in a New York office or something. And it does feel in an esoteric sense for me, I belong in a different time period sometimes, and I\u2019m quite a cynical, basic thinking human being, but I do wonder about those things and wonder if I belong somewhere else. These kind of movies allow me to plug into that feeling,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd thank God for \u201cthese kind of movies,\u201d say I.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEven though we\u2019re watching Robert\u2019s life, I do think anyone in the audience can reach in and pull out a sense of meaning for their own life from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJones had a similar feeling when she read the script. \u201cI just connected to it,\u201d she tells us. After reading, she was moved to tears.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen she embarked to find a way to play Gladys, the woman who melts Grainier\u2019s heart and lights up his life.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAt that time, she and her family were living in a very urban area of London so she jumped at the opportunity of, as she put it, \u201cgoing on an adventure and being in that big open space and being away from noise\u2026 and this over-saturation that I think we\u2019re all feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJones read tomes that featured accounts of pioneering women\u00a0and\u00a0of their attempts to survive and make it through.<\/p>\n

\n\tThose times resonate, she says. \u201cWe are living in these complex times. How do we make our relationships work? How do we make our families work? How do we get from the day to day? And the film, even though it\u2019s set in the past, it feels very contemporary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven down to the struggle to make money to have a quality of life \u201cthat can ensure we flourish. And in some ways it is very hard for them to get that balance,\u201d Jones adds.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actress says that she\u2019s keen to see what people make of the film and \u201cwhat the conversations are that it started. Because it\u2019s not trying to bash you on the head. It\u2019s not trying to shock you or scare you. It\u2019s strong and it\u2019s impactful, but it\u2019s doing it in a very human way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJones also appears in the London Film Festival\u2019s closing night film, director Julia Jackman\u2019s\u00a0100 Nights of Hero, with Emma Corrin, Nicholas Galitzine, Maika Monroe, Charli XCX and Amir El-Masry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAgain, a very different film, completely idiosyncratic,\u201d Jones says of 100 Nights of Hero. \u201cI feel like cinema at the moment has to be really distinctive. You have to be very true to something and unwrap it and unpack it. So\u00a0100 Nights of Hero, is a completely different direction, but really entertaining and hopefully impactful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tFelicity Jones. Baz bamigboye\/Deadline<\/p>\n

\n\tNot to put too much weight on\u00a0Train Dreams, but it\u2019s very much about us, and how we got here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a mirror,\u201d says Jones, nodding.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe world feels like it\u2019s going so fast. I think we all feel, to use the pun, we just need to get off the train. How do we get off the train? And this film almost just gives us a little moment of, \u2018Okay, let\u2019s take a pause and just reflect and realize we do have choices and we are not just at the mercy of bigger forces.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHer comments remind me of a conversation the actor Steve Zahn and I had recently, where we both felt that we wanted, now and again, to see movies that allowed us to take a breath.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI somehow feel that they\u2019re the kind of films that last longest. And once again I return to James Stewart\u2019s comment about how some pictures give you little bits of time that you never forget.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTrain Dreams\u00a0does that. It\u2019s such a beautifully crafted gem of a movie.\u00a0The film is in select cinemas in the U.S. and UK November 7 and screens on Netflix from November 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The director Clint Bentley (Jockey, Sing Sing) was chatting about his film\u00a0Train Dreams\u00a0that\u2019s been playing at the BFI…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":303410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[154034,154035,171,154036,154037,151744,53,4659,154038,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-303409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-awards-news","9":"tag-clint-bentley","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-felicity-jones","12":"tag-joel-edgerton","13":"tag-london-film-festival","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-netflix","16":"tag-train-dreams","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115374176252762525","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}