Middlebrow Madness

It gives me little pleasure to report that Train Dreams is an unfortunately empty film. A pretty film, in some ways. But an empty one. And as a moviegoer who believes that today’s critics are, on the whole, far too easy on this contemporary strain of middlebrow cinema, I must confess: I’m tired of films that look and feel like Train Dreams. I know nothing about the original Denis Johnson novel, which some people I know have called a great one — I only have the film. And in the film of Train Dreams, everything which could possibly be said about it is already so present at the surface, already so obvious and literal and exhaustively clear, it’s transparent. The movie is a long, muted, gentle lament on the old themes of American industrialism and on the fading of nature at the hands of those American industries. It’s about the loss and the hard work and the loneliness of a single stoic man, quietly watching history pass him by.