Joel Edgerton who plays Robert in Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams tried to option Denis Johnson’s novella he was so impressed by it. In a case of kismet Clint chose to ask Joel to play the man whose life is given extraordinary grace in the film. Joel talks about both the novella and the way the film connects with people.
Joel Edgerton:
I first read the novella after making Boy Erased. I don’t know why, maybe because, Boy Erased was an adaptation, that when I read Train Dreams, I felt so engaged with the novella that I tried to get my hands on the rights to the book.
I say this somewhat jokingly, but 100 percent honestly, am so relieved that the rights were taken. Because I would’ve maybe tried to adapt the novella. It’s a very complicated book to try and adapt. I wasn’t sure whether it was really something I wanted to just act in or maybe I would try and direct a movie based on it. But the rights were taken, and I put it out of my mind.
Four or so years later, Clint asked me about being in the film and it felt almost too good to be true. Like, somehow, he knew that I loved this book. So, you know, I was really curious how he had adapted the novella. It was amazing. I thought his first film, Jockey, was extraordinary.
More than anything, he himself as a director had so many of the qualities that Robert has as a character in terms of the virtues of Robert, Clint is a very kind, open, generous, gentle person.
The reason that I think I was moved by the book is it conjures up as a novella the idea of a Western. Of that period in America. But it’s not a Western in the classic sense that we all know. The Clint Eastwood type Western, in which violence is very much in the foreground. And the story construction is often about violence or revenge or retribution. A fight of some kind.
In Train Dreams, you know, I discovered a Western that is thoughtful and meditative and philosophical and religious, almost, in terms of its exploration of the purpose of life, the meaning of life. Asking questions of why we’re here and what do we do with our time on earth, and what do our connections with other people mean. In that sense, the exploration of the dignity of the ordinary life that we don’t often see celebrated in cinema. ‘Cause we’re used to watching movies because somebody did something amazing or changed the world or saved the world.
Here’s Robert just living his life in a seemingly mundane way, but there’s something majestic about it. I think that it holds its place as a piece of cinema, because I truly believe that most people that are watching movies have ordinary lives, see themselves as quite ordinary. I think it’s great to hold up a mirror to that experience, even though we’re watching a logger and helping to build the railroads in a bygone era.
We can see something of ourselves in him because we know what love feels like and we know that we long for love, or we have family, or we long for that. And at some point, sadly in our lives, we’ll experience some kind of grief or loss if we’re part of the world. You know, if we’re part of a community or a family. And again, you know, I was surprised at how reflective that is. But for me, I thought, “Wow, this is so dignified.”
Yet all it is doing is following the track and the entire journey of one ordinary man’s life. I found it so moving and so personal, partly also knowing that, thankfully, because I didn’t get the rights in the book, that when Clint Bentley reached out to me, I’d just become a dad. I was in love, and I was a dad, and I was in love with my wife and I’m in love with my kids. I’m scared about what kind of a dad I’m gonna be and how work separates me from them. I realized my life had come to a point where I had way more similarities to the character than I had before.
Sometimes you go in with one expectation of why you want to do a project or play a character, and I think it’s really special sometimes that the film teaches you what it’s about in other ways for other people. And sometimes, that means, you know, speaking to an audience about their perception of it. You know. And what I found surprising about the film is that it’s far more connective to an audience that I expected. Like a modern audience.
I knew that it dealt with some very prevalent subjects: like the use and abuse of migrant workers, ideas about our connectivity to the environment, and our abuse of the world and how we harvest it without paying real attention to the future. Plus, the feelings we have about how quickly the world is moving in terms of new inventions in technology and how we worry about these things affecting our industry for the future and our careers.
And, you know, what is a steam donkey and a chainsaw to a logger is the same as what does AI mean to all of us in some ways. So, I think one surprise was how much audiences connected with some of these themes beyond the normal human universal aspects of love and family and loss.
I think once you hear someone’s story, you can’t help but imagine walking in those shoes that they’ve walked in. And that’s my job as an actor on one hand, but it’s also something I’m very curious about generally as a person.
