Thoughts on Train Dreams

I think a good movie can change your life. Except, it’s hard to find a good movie, especially one that means something to you. Here’s what I mean: your friend tells you they’ve just seen the one. This movie has the best actors and actresses, soundtrack, cinematography, and director. “It’ll change your life,” they say, but you found that it only changed their life. I’ve had some moments like this, where I enjoy a movie, but it does not change my life. I saw Perfect Days recently, and a lot of reviews said it was unforgettable. Oh I enjoyed it, but it’s not going to stick. Soon it’ll be a remark, “I’ve seen it”, but I won’t be able to recall its main plot or how it made me feel. It’s such a special thing for pieces of media of any form to have a real impact on you, and it requires circumstances to fall into place like leaves in the fall piling themselves together for an excited dog to leap through. Some movies ten years earlier would only move you off the couch to pick up the remote and put on something else, but in the current day it moves you to cry and cry and cry and consider what’s even going on. All that to say is that you have to be in the right time and place for a movie to be life changing, and then the film still needs to have that beautiful essence you take meaning from.

There’s a movie I’d been trying to watch for almost nine months called Train Dreams. It premiered at the 2025 Sundance festival, and then was unexpectedly released by Netflix. People were thankful for a wider audience to be able to appreciate it, but also still disliked Netflix as a whole and the way they often treat their filmmaking associates. I stumbled onto it while reading about the 2026 Oscars as it was nominated for Best Picture. Those lists of movies I always like to peruse, especially the ones that don’t win. They usually stay unknown, and are more fun to watch and form an opinion about before I know anyone else that has seen it. I didn’t even watch the trailer; I just saw the cover and plot summary and knew I would probably like it. Time slipped away, as it likes to, and I saw lots of movies, but not Train Dreams. Finally, I found myself with enough time this Saturday night to watch it. For me, it was life changing.

Spoilers ruin great movies, so I won’t describe what happens exactly, but I can describe how it made me feel. There was at one point a dying logger, who while laying against a tree they would soon fall, just as the endless forest behind them would go one by one, said “Beautiful, ain’t it? Just beautiful. All of it.” He may have just been talking about the forest, but the movie began to paint this picture of beauty in all of it. Not just in things that are obviously wonderful, like dancing or playing with your kids, but also things that are typically sad and terrible. There is beauty in someone’s funeral with the way they choose a specific marigold they loved to decorate the church, or for Blackbirds by The Beatles to play after the main eulogy. I think a lot about that: what song would I play and how would it make people feel remembering me? While you sit weeping about their life gone by, you might still think, isn’t this really beautiful.

This movie was life changing for me because I relate strongly to the message, and it came when I’ve been thinking a lot about beauty and also things that are sad. I have a grandmother who just recently entered the ICU, with a low chance of coming out. My parents look older every time I see them, and I know that’s never going to go the opposite direction. Yet, I see so much beauty everyday, and these hard things make me think how beautiful it is to have spent so much time with the people I love. It makes me appreciate just being.

Not every film is life changing, and it’s usually not life changing to everyone in the same way or at all. It’s when you find that one for you, at the right time: that is delightful. It’s especially delightful because it’s something you share only with yourself. Other people may have similar feelings, but they will never know how it felt to watch it as you, and cry as you, and laugh at the scene you uniquely feel with. I watch movies to share those moments with others, but importantly with myself.