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I’ve been trying to see all the Best Picture nominees before the Oscars go out, and tonight I caught up with Train Dreams. What a beautiful movie. A few random thoughts, in which I will probably have spoilers so if that bothers you, don’t read on until after you see it:

“The world needs a hermit in the woods as much as a preacher in the pulpit.”

First, I’m not familiar with the novella the movie is based on. Feels like I need to correct that oversight. The movie’s storytelling is spare and restrained, which I appreciated. I’d heard chatter about it being a very sad movie, and I honestly wasn’t quite ready for another gut-wrencher after watching Hamnet. Yes, Train Dreams is sad, but the first word I’d use isn’t so much sad as haunted. Joel Edgerton’s eyes capture a world changing faster than he is able or willing to adapt, a world haunted by his own dreams and memories of loss, failure, and regret.

“The world’s an old place. Probably nothing it hasn’t seen by now.”

If you’d asked me to name the movie’s time period during the first half of the film, I was ready to put it in the mid-to-late 1800s. (I may have missed a bit of the initial narration if they clarified it there.) So the advancing technology – the chain saw, the highway, the astronaut! – illustrated Edgerton’s character even more starkly back in the past. How quickly time moves.

Train Dreams’ casting was exquisite. In addition to Edgerton, Daisy Ridley and Kerry Condon comfortably inhabit the only two female roles (it is the western wilderness, I guess) and Will Patton’s gentle narration threads the story together. And then there’s William H. Macy. I’ve seen and loved Bill Macy as a hapless car salesman, a deadbeat addict father, a random collection of military officers, and sad casino jinx. But philosopher coot wilderness logger Bill Macy may well be my favorite Bill Macy. Perfectly cast, and oh-so good in the role.

Arn (Macy): What’s keeping you awake over there?
Robert (Edgerton): Oh, uh… Arn, do you… do you think that… the bad things that we do follow us through life?
Arn: I don’t know. I’ve seen bad men raised up and good men brought to their knees. I reckon if I could figure it out, I’d be sleeping next to someone a lot better-looking than you.

Train Dreams is gonna stick with me for a while. In the pointed final sequence, Edgerton’s character, about to do a loop in a biplane, is warned “you better hold on to something”. As he remembers the things in his life he has, indeed, held on to, the narrator tells us that he finally felt connected to it all. In our own unmoored lives in the midst of a rapidly-changing world, we, too, might benefit from reflecting on who and what we are connected to.