An Elegy for Endurance: Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones on the Quiet Power of ‘Train Dreams’ [VIDEO INTERVIEW]

“Go you good thing, go!,” said Joel Edgerton about his most recent film Train Dreams, at a recent press day for the film.

“It’s kind of about supporting the little things that are really potent,” he explained of the Australian phrase when I congratulated him on the film being the little engine that could. A movie modest in scale yet profound in emotional impact, and Edgerton said he knew that from the start. 

“I just had this instinct when I met Clint (Bentley), when I read the novella, when he had adapted it so well it was a thing that I had to hold onto. Even in the middle of the strike, when things got pushed six months. It was like ‘I’m not doing anything else but waiting to do this film.’” 

“Partly because I selfishly realized, it was so personal in many ways for me. The stuff that Robert goes through, that I like I was going to get something out of the experience of it,” he admitted.  

Edgerton, who has steadily built one of the most respected careers in contemporary cinema through Loving, The Gift, and Boy Erased, portrays Robert Grainier, a railroad worker whose simple life becomes an elegy for resilience, faith, and endurance. The film is directed and co-written by Clint Bentley, whose 2021 Sundance hit Jockey established him as a filmmaker with a poet’s eye for the human condition. Bentley, a Texas native and son of a horse trainer, brings the same intimacy and authenticity to Train Dreams, weaving Denis Johnson’s 2011 Pulitzer-nominated novella into something vast yet deeply human. 

Felicity Jones, who plays Grainier’s wife Gladys, chimed in to say that when she first read the script it felt “quite special.” 

Admitting that it was unusual to see a story unfold across so many decades, Jones added, “It had this great sweep to it but at the same time was rooted in a real domesticity, humor and idiosyncrasy.”  

Jones, an Academy Award nominee for The Theory of Everything and The Brutalist, brings warmth and quiet gravity to her role, grounding the film’s dreamlike Americana in emotional realism. 

Edgerton went on to reflect on how his personal life informed his performance. “Felicity, Clint, and I all have children around the same age. And I didn’t realize what a seismic shift becoming a dad was.” 

Jones echoed that sentiment: “I think life experiences change you and shift you, and when your responsibilities get so much more things have so much more weight.” She continued. “And that’s so much I loved about this film, it’s sort of about, you know, life just throws these curve balls. You don’t know what’s going to happen, and really terrible things can happen, and it’s about how you manage and get up and keep going in the face of trauma and tragedy.” 

Bentley, alongside cinematographer Adolpho Veloso (The Hummingbird Project), crafts an elegiac visual palette of golden-hour light and quiet expanses that mirror the emotional terrain of its characters. The result is a film that hums with memory, loss, and the strange peace that comes from surrendering to life’s unknowable rhythm and focusing on what’s truly important.

Train Dreams is currently in select theaters and will be on Netflix November 21.

Landon Johnson is a writer and a film and marketing guru. Through his six-year career in media marketing and development, he has worked in New York, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong for a variety of entertainment companies. He can quote every line from Wes Craven’s “Scream,” and is a voting member of the Screen Actors Guild who has served on numerous awards nominating committees for both film and TV. When he’s not binge-watching independent films, he has a real passion for promoting untold stories portrayed on film that have a lasting impact on audiences.

Latest posts by Landon Johnson (see all)

Continue Reading