By Bailey Pennick

What makes a life worth living? For the majority of us, it’s a collection of moments, connections, and memories that create a patchwork of a lifetime. It might not seem grand or exciting, but these stories and relationships carve a space in the world that is our own. It’s quiet and small, but it is still of value.

For his follow-up to 2021’s Jockey, writer-director Clint Bentley returns to the 2025 Sundance Film Festival with Train Dreams — a gorgeous and thoughtful adaptation of Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella of the same name. The life of Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) is one of beginnings and endings without much fanfare. 

Working long stints as a railroad logger at the turn of the 20th century, he meets other men working the lines (including a lived-in William H. Macy) and learns about nature and the world through his interactions with them. He knows his worth bringing home large sums of money for his family, but the passage of time is much more stark to him as his daughter goes from being a new baby to a rambunctious toddler in what seems to be a blink of an eye because of his absences. When a wildfire breaks out and destroys his home, Grainier has lost the rhythm of his simple life. When he can’t find his wife (Felicity Jones) and his daughter anywhere in the aftermath, he’s lost everything. But life goes on, and so does Grainier.

Edgerton’s performance is masterful. He brings intense emotion and thoughtfulness to a very quiet, and often solitary, character. “I have been interested [in] watching characters that are not necessarily typically super proactive,” he says to the Library Theater crowd after the Park City premiere of the film on January 26.  “I do believe that probably a greater percentage of people in the world are moved by the world rather than move the world by their own will. And I’m really interested in the idea that some of us don’t believe we have the power to change things around us and we have to absorb terrible things and find a way to move on. There’s a silence to this character that I think a lot of people can relate to.”

From the building of the U.S. railroad system to the Apollo 8 mission, Train Dreams exists within an iconic period of American history, but its power is within this seemingly small story of one man’s life. Bentley gives that credit to Johnson’s original work: “There’s something very magical and special about the book. If you haven’t read it, it’s like 117 pages long and it just kind of jumps around all over the place, but yet you get to the end of it — you could read it in like two hours — and yet you feel like you’ve experienced an entire life. That felt like something very special to try and do with cinema. To try and see all these moments, and feel all these moments, and feel them gliding past like they do in our lives.”

The full house is right there with him, some nodding emphatically as he continues. “You know how you look up and like five years [are] gone? These little moments that felt very simple at the time then, you look back and you realize they kind of defined your life.” With an impactful lead performance, stunning cinematography, and a mesmerizing score by The National’s Bryce Dessner, Train Dreams reminds us all that every life lived is worthy of memorializing.