The Train Dreams Wars Are Here. Wait, What?
Over the weekend, Clint Bentley’s lovely, delicate, and moving period drama, Train Dreams, debuted on Netflix — and a certain corner of the social-media world went totally insane. To be clear, I include myself in this group. The particular nature of our various debates is largely irrelevant, and, in fact, it was multifaceted. Some of us argued about the film’s use of voice-over. (Too much? Too beholden to the novel? Too lazy? Just right?) About the title. (Silly? Haunting? Too … train-y?) About the nature of its adaptation. (You should read Roxana Hadadi’s excellent piece on that here.) About the Nick Cave song over the end credits (which I’m not sure even I can defend). And there were also invariably people arguing about the fact that we were arguing about Train Dreams. I’m not linking to any of these tweets because, frankly, everybody has been through enough; also, I suspect I’ve been blocked by a couple of the accounts.
But all I want to say is: How wonderful! How wonderful to be arguing about such a small movie. Netflix didn’t produce Train Dreams. It picked the film up after its Sundance premiere, and to be fair, a lot of us were worried about the movie getting lost amid the streamer’s swirling stew of ceaseless and forgettable content. There is no doubt in my mind that Train Dreams is best experienced on a big screen, and I feel fortunate to have seen it twice that way. Netflix did give it a decent, albeit brief, theatrical run; it’s still playing at New York’s IFC Center, for example, as well as in several other cities, including Los Angeles, through the Thanksgiving holiday. (That’s more than a lot of other Netflix movies, some of them very good, have gotten.) But Netflix’s ability to get a movie in front of thousands, even millions, of people under the right circumstances remains unmatched — and so does its ability to get us to lose our minds about it, even if it’s just for a week or two.
Similar things have happened with other Netflix movies. A House of Dynamite had its own brief flare-up a couple of weeks ago. (Boring? Bad? Propaganda? And why does Idris Elba sound like that?) Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein has also been inspiring a steady stream of conversation about the nature of its adaptation, its pacing, Jacob Elordi’s performance, and more. We’ll see what happens with Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man, which actually hits theaters this week. The most notable example that I can remember dates back to 2019, when Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story garnered respectful but mostly muted responses during their theatrical runs and then exploded into wall-smashing memes and screaming hot takes as soon as they dropped on Netflix. Sometimes, Netflix itself tries to egg on these discussions through its own media channels. What feels encouraging about the Train Dreams wars is that they seem mostly to be an organic phenomenon; there are no brand accounts relentlessly pushing GIFs on us, as far as I can tell.
In an ideal world, this would happen regularly through theatrical releases — through slow, platforming rollouts or properly handled wide openings. But we do not live in that world. Only a handful have broken through that way this year. One Battle After Another got everyone talking and still inspires debate. I fervently hope that Chloé Zhao’s wonderful Hamnet will do something similar over the next few weeks and months. Like Train Dreams, both of those films are tipped for major awards-season runs, which will certainly help hold our attention. But despite my boundless love of Train Dreams, I cannot imagine this modest film generating this much debate through a theatrical release, even a properly funded and successful one.
Shouldn’t the quality of the discourse matter, though? Those of us who want to bliss out on the power and beauty of Train Dreams (and, let’s be fair, most people seem to love it) might be bothered a little by the fact that our sacred reveries to the art of cinema and whatnot have to be interrupted by people making silly jokes about a movie’s title. Not all conversation is created equal, sure. But something that generates broad discussion among a wide variety of people from all over the country and the world will by necessity feel dumb and inane and pointless to others. That’s just what happens. Movies remain a popular art, which means people should be seeing them and arguing about them on all levels.
There’s something else, too. Netflix’s ability to generate discourse is powerful but temporary. One of the critical flaws in its approach is that the discussions — be they smart, stupid, or indifferent — rarely last. Like the popularity of the titles themselves, the arguments burn themselves out over a weekend or a couple of weeks, before everybody’s on to the next thing. It’s part of the cadence of modern life, and I don’t really know a way around it. We can complain all we want about various aspects of the Train Dreams wars. But know this: We’ll miss this discourse when it’s gone.