Train Dreams (2025)

Yes, I am doing last-minute catchup of the oscar nominees before the ceremony happening in 10 days. I will be posting about what I think should win in the coming days and this will be another test of whether the Academy has good taste after last year when they showed that they could make good decisions if they wanted to. 

Train Dreams is ethereal, emotional, and toiling. Grainier spends his life moving from passivity to passion, to grief and finally to wonder. I can’t help but think if this is just what existence is—it’s all just these stages mixed up in different orders lasting different times. 

At the end of the day though, perhaps precisely because it’s so expansive, the story failed to truly move me. Maybe it will catch up with me later like how the Chinese laborer they threw off the bridge started haunting his dreams, or maybe it’s just catching me at a passive stage. Only time will tell.