"Train Dreams" Is Too Tidy to Go Off the Rails

""Train Dreams" is a beautiful movie, but I can't say that I entirely trust its beauty. The director, Clint Bentley, and the cinematographer, Adolpho Veloso, have composed a studiedly rapturous hymn to the American wilderness-to the scenic glories of babbling brooks, wispy cloud formations, and trees soaring majestically heavenward. It's an exaltation of the natural world, rendered with an almost supernatural intensity of light and color, and with a score, by Bryce Dessner, whose rippling chords seem to evoke the sounds of cascading water."

"Watching the movie earlier this year, via the Sundance Film Festival's online-viewing platform, I marvelled at the clarity of Veloso's images, with their sharp interplay of sunshine and shadows: a patch of emerald-green forest, glimpsed from inside a cavernous tunnel, didn't lose its contrasts on my home TV. A second viewing, this time in a proper theatre, proved more captivating still: here, at last, was a screen capacious enough to withstand the radiance of a golden-pink sunset and the faces of Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones."

Clint Bentley and cinematographer Adolpho Veloso render a rapturous visual hymn to the American wilderness, emphasizing light, color, and majestic natural detail. Bryce Dessner's rippling score evokes cascading water and complements the imagery. Veloso's clarity captures sharp interplay of sunshine and shadow, revealing emerald-green forests and radiant golden-pink sunsets on a theatre screen. The film exhibits undeniably majestic craftsmanship that elicits awe. That visual splendor sometimes risks surpassing the story's emotional or thematic depth. The narrative unfolds as moments in the life of Robert Grainier, a thoughtful, taciturn man orphaned as a boy in the late nineteenth century.

Read at The New Yorker