By India McCarty
William H. Macey and Kerry Condon hope that audiences “feel the same” sense of wonder when watching their latest movie, TRAIN DREAMS.
“It was a fabulous script,” Macey told Movieguide®. “It was beautifully well-written, and I jumped on it like a duck on a junebug.”
Condon echoed her co-star, saying, “There were so many beautiful moments. It was so moving.”
TRAIN DREAMS is an adaptation of Denis Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize finalist novella of the same name, starring Macey, Condon, Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones.
A synopsis of the movie from Netflix reads, “A logger leads a life of quiet grace as he experiences love and loss during an era of monumental change in early 20th-century America.”
Macey shared that, after seeing a rough cut of TRAIN DREAMS, he was “emotional,” joking, “I was a mess…I can’t talk to people about this!”
“I did feel a joy, though, in the kind of camaraderie because everyone was doing it — it wasn’t a money job,” Condon said of the production experience. “It was like everyone was doing it because it was — the script was beautiful, and we all had that hope that this might catch a wave, that other people were going to feel the same as us.”
Industry insiders are already predicting TRAIN DREAMS could score a Best Picture nomination at this year’s Academy Awards. The movie’s co-writer/director Clint Bentley and co-writer Greg Kwedar are already set to receive Deadline’s Disruptors Award at the upcoming Sun Valley Film Festival.
“I’ve talked to some people who read the book who think it’s super depressing, and they don’t see the same thing in it that I do,” Bentley said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “I think it’s funny that we’re looking at the same text and getting different things from it.”
He continued, “What you just articulated very well is what I hoped people would take from it. This aspect of, yes, life is a bit meaningless…I think there’s a bit of a beauty in that. But once you contend with it, you have to say, well, what is meaningful? And it’s those little moments you have in life. The little things, and being present in those moments, actually give your life value and meaning.”
“It goes back to the paradox of life: even if nothing lasts, you still have it, and you still have that moment, and there are all these things that we do in life that aren’t going to matter in the end, and yet you still put yourself into it, and they do matter, because they matter in this moment,” Bentley shared.
He added, “I really did want it to be an appreciation of a certain type of person, regardless of country or race or creed or gender, who worked…their entire life and tried to build a life for themselves and led a beautiful life — and then isn’t celebrated. Yes, the movie, and all of us, might not last, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, right?”
TRAIN DREAMS premieres on Netflix Nov. 21.
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