Joel Edgerton's Robert looking concerned while holding a puppy in Train DreamsCr. BBP Train Dreams. LLC. © 2025
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Ash Crossan
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Grant Hermanns
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Clint Bentley and a star-studded cast have brought the award-winning Train Dreams to life on screen, and the film is already one of the best-reviewed films of the year. Based on Denis Johnson's 2011 novella of the same name, the story revolves around Robert Grainier, a man who works on the United States' growing railroad empire in the early 20th century and attempts to maintain his peaceful home life amid the brutality of the changing landscape.
Joel Edgerton leads the ensemble cast as Robert, alongside Felicity Jones as his wife, Gladys, Kerry Condon as forestry services worker Claire and William H. Macy as explosives expert Arn, among many others. Having made its world premiere at 2025's Sundance Film Festival, Train Dreams has remained one of the most acclaimed films of the year, currently holding a 95% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and being hailed by many as a sneaky contender for multiple Oscars victories.
In honor of the movie's Netflix premiere, ScreenRant's Ash Crossan interviewed Clint Bentley, Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, William H. Macy and Kerry Condon to discuss Train Dreams. When looking at his approach to adapting Johnson's novella to the screen, the co-writer/director began by recalling the first time he read the source material about a decade before making the film, which he says "started a lifelong love of Denis Johnson and his writing".
While initially falling in love with the novella, Bentley didn't consider taking Train Dreams to the screen until after having made his acclaimed 2021 sports drama Jockey, in which producers got the rights to the material and reached out to the filmmaker. From there, he went back and re-read the novel, and became struck by the fact "it had a whole life in it" and "felt so expansive", despite only consisting of 117 pages:
It covered so much time, and it was so poetic and strange. There was so much that struck me.
When it came to faithfully translating the novella to the screen, Bentley found that the trickiest element of Train Dreams to adapt was finding the balance between "covering 85 years in a guy's life" and "going so broad", wanting to ensure that he didn't "make a film that can't go deep". Expressing that Johnson's novella was, therefore, "easy to expand upon" for the film, there were also "so many good little gems in it that are [sometimes] just a sentence long" that he didn't want to lose as they were "so evocative".
However, despite having a little bit of flexibility with the movie's runtime compared to the novella's length, Bentley does lament having to cut a scene reuniting him with Jockey star Clifton Collins Jr. As the filmmaker explained, there was a scene early in the film in which the Emmy nominee played a character named Boomer, "who's dying and gets a drink of water from his own boom":
Clint Bentley: It was a 10-minute-long scene that was this beautiful monologue from Clifton, and I just couldn't make it work anywhere in the film, in the edit, and that unfortunately had to go. But he did such a beautiful job with it.
Edgerton similarly found himself falling in love with Johnson's novella "years before" getting involved with the film, having become "very connected to it" and feeling Bentley "somehow knew that I was obsessed" with Train Dreams. Describing himself as being "hook, line and sinker" ready to take the material on, he then turned to learning more about the director he would be working with, getting further excited at collaborating with Bentley:
Joel Edgerton: He'd made this marvelous film called Jockey, and he'd done such a great adaptation. Then, he was such a pleasure to meet, so I was like, "I'm in." And really, "Can this be mine?" As in, it was too good to be true.
For Jones, she recalled the various "weird connections" she had to Train Dreams before ever signing on for the film, namely having "bumped into" Edgerton a week after receiving the script, to which the Golden Globe nominee humorously quipped he "was stalking" her. The Rogue One alum laughed as she expressed thinking "it was a coincidence" before acknowledging "you did look a bit awkward" after Edgerton further joked that he was thinking to himself, "How do I make this look natural?"
Putting the jokes aside, though, Jones did find that running into Edgerton "kind of solidified my interest in wanting to do the film". She pointed out that "the script was excellent", but that "when things come together" in the way of bringing potential collaborators together, she takes it as "a sign that it's the right thing to do".
The Train Dreams Cast All Have Unique Relationships With Nature
ScreenRant: I will say my Star Wars-loving heart is bursting being in the room with both of you, who played some of my favorite characters and Kerry was also in Skeleton Crew. We just got to get William H. Macy in there.
Joel Edgerton: We could do a recut of the movie where, instead of Katie, we have an android or something. Just a little droid walking along.
ScreenRant: Did y'all talk about that connection, though?
Felicity Jones: No, I haven't seen your Star Wars. [Laughs]
Joel Edgerton: Really? This is where I tear the mics off and [makes storm out motion]. [Laughs]
Felicity Jones: You're like, "What?! Get out!" [Laughs]
Joel Edgerton: No, we didn't really talk about it. Occasionally, though, when you run into a couple of people, and you're like, "Oh yeah. Oh, okay. The three of us." Yeah. All right. I love Rogue One.
ScreenRant: I will say, nature is also kind of a big character in this film. Who in the cast would you go into a survival mode series with, or game show where you're going to their house when things go down?
Joel Edgerton: Ooh. Not [William H. Macy's character] Arn Peeples. He's got the dynamite, but I don't trust him that well. He's fun to be around. Obviously, I'd go [to Felicity], she's just a crack shot. She can grow vegetables. She can raise children, and she's my wife. If I didn't choose her, I'd be in trouble. [Chuckles]
ScreenRant: How about which actor in the film would you go to?
Felicity Jones: Oh, we thought you meant character. [Chuckles] I was going to say Claire. You could go to Claire's watchtower and hang out. Ummm —
Joel Edgerton: Me, obviously.
Felicity Jones: [Laughs] Yeah, exactly. We'll all go around to Joel's house.
Joel Edgerton: I'll keep you alive. [Laughs] No, Bill actually would be a good survivalist, I reckon. He knows how to build things.
Felicity Jones: Bill's been given us gin!
Joel Edgerton: Yeah, he can distill alcohol. Tick [that box]. He can build things with wood. Tick [that box]. He can play ukulele and harmonica, which, hopefully, you'd have with him. Tick [that box]. Bill's my guy.
ScreenRant: Nature is like a character in this film. So what is your kind of relationship to nature, and then, did you get to do anything on your own while filming this movie?
William H. Macy as Arn smoking a pipe and sitting on some logs while looking at the camera in Train DreamsCr. Corey Castellano/BBP Train Dreams. LLC. © 2025.
William H. Macy: I didn't, I was there in and out, but I grew up in a small town. My dad built our house, and we camped out for the entire time he was doing it. I was in the Boy Scouts, I was in the Explorer Scouts, in the order of the arrow canoeing and stuff like that. And I live in the country to this day, and I'm a woodworker and I plant trees. I plant lots of trees.
ScreenRant: Like a Ron Swanson. When things go bad, I'm coming to your house.
Kerry Condon: Well, he's got gin too.
William H. Macy: I do, I also have a distillery.
Kerry Condon: Now, everyone's going to be coming here.
William H. Macy: I got all the basics covered.
Kerry Condon: Yeah, you could use it for medicine too. I grew up in the countryside, in nature, and from a very young age, my father made us aware of nature and animals and cruelty to animals. We were just very aware of nature, and we were made to understand it. It was, like, [warning against] ignorance. "If you don't know what that tree is, [learn about it]," that sort of thing. I'm really grateful now that I have that. Looking back, I thought everyone kind of had it, but now I see it was so unique to know those things.
ScreenRant: I like the idea that you mentioned coming in and out. These characters can interact and have a lasting impact. So I'm curious, because you were in and out, what lasting impact did making this film have on you?
William H. Macy: Well, we've been doing a lot of press for it, and people like it, so that makes me feel good. I loved it when I read it. I loved it when I saw the first cut of it. I'm really proud to be in it. And I think it's getting over, it really strikes a chord with people, and what a joy that is. It doesn't happen that much in a career where you come in, and you do a film that sparks the national imagination.
ScreenRant: Do you often know while you're making it, or is it you're like, "Oh, this is something special. There's going to be buzz" — I'm sure the opposite has happened too.
William H. Macy: I flatter myself that I'm good at reading scripts. So there's sometimes, and this one, I said, "This is going to be huge." I told Felicity, my wife, "This is going to be huge. It's beautiful." I knew Fargo was going to be big. I knew Shameless was going to be big. I mean, one can never [truly] know. I've also done some scripts that got bollocked up in the process, and they weren't very good.
Kerry Condon: Lose their way, yeah, that's unfortunate. But then you learn a lot on those projects, more than you do on a great project. I never know, nor do I think it's my job to think beyond it. My job is just making it, and then the minute that's over, I'm gone. What happens after that is sort of not really having to do with me, almost. Even at that, I just forget it, and then I have to kind of clear the slate for the next job that comes in. But every job, you hope, because everyone worked really hard on it.
William H. Macy: Elizabeth Gilbert said, "It's our job to make the film, but how people react to it is not within our purview." So, in a weird way, we got to make the film, which is great. And now this is a whole different point, and people are digging it.
Train Dreams Taught Bentley A Few Lessons To Carry Into His Next Projects
ScreenRant: I will say Felicity and Joel together really warms my Star Wars-loving heart.
Clint Bentley: [Laughs] I always forget about that.
ScreenRant: I was like, "Jyn and Uncle Owen together?!"
Clint Bentley: As it should have been.
ScreenRant: So when you were looking for these characters, what were you looking for in those two specifically?
Clint Bentley: I think just looking at Joel and Grainier, looking for somebody who could be this sweet man who could do so much with so little, and could do more with just a look than 10 lines of dialogue. And that's Joel. He's got such a deep reservoir of feeling and talent. And then, with Gladys, trying to find somebody who had all these paradoxes to her. She was strong and tough, and that you could believe could run a farm on her own out in the middle of nowhere in Idaho in the early 1900s, but also very sweet and tender, and just all of these different aspects. She is such, I think, a phenomenal enigma of an actor, where I feel like she can do anything, and she just steps on, and you immediately know that character somehow.
ScreenRant: Right off the bat, the film opens with this kind of beautiful montage. There are so many interesting shots in this film. I'm curious which one you are maybe most proud of, or just a story of the most challenging one to pull off that you're like, "We got it."
Clint Bentley: There are so many. I think the lovely thing is that Adolpho Veloso, our cinematographer, is just so brilliant and can turn and make a painting out of almost anything with nothing. We shot with all natural light almost, except for two scenes. There's one at the end that, without spoiling it, what his cabin turns into late in his life with some plants. I'm particularly in love with that shot and proud of it.
ScreenRant: What did working on Train Dreams teach you about the types of films you want to make next?
Clint Bentley: It's a great question that I'm still trying to figure out, probably. I really enjoyed [that] it was very difficult, [because] the challenges were also the joys of it, because there's an openness to it. It's not plot driven in the same way. It's a story that can just flow along, and it has an opportunity as a film to mix all of these mediums and all these different story types, where it's got a love story, and there's a cowboy scene in the middle of the movie, and there's dream sequences. I loved having a playground to do all of those things in service of a story, ultimately, where it didn't just feel random and that I hope to find again.
Be sure to dive into some of our other Train Dreams-related coverage with:
- Our previous interview with Joel Edgerton at the Sundance Film Festival
- Our other favorite films to come out of the Sundance Film Festival
- Our major Oscars predictions from Sundance 2025
Train Dreams is now streaming on Netflix.
6/10
Train Dreams
10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Like Follow Followed PG-13 Drama Western Release Date November 7, 2025 Runtime 102 minutes Director Clint Bentley Writers Greg Kwedar, Clint Bentley Producers Ashley Schlaifer, Marissa McMahon, Michael Heimler, Teddy Schwarzman, Will JanowitzCast
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Felicity Jones
Gladys Grainer
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Joel Edgerton
Robert Grainier
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