Adapting ‘Train Dreams’: Clint Bentley on Why Changing One of the ‘Greatest Endings in Literature’ Mattered

In a short time, director Clint Bentley lost both his parents and then welcomed his first child, both of which he carried into his adaptation of Denis Johnson’s “Train Dreams” with his longtime writing and producing partner, Greg Kwedar.

Johnson’s novella captured specific, sometimes seemingly insignificant, moments in the life of an ordinary logger named Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), who died at 80. While on this week’s episode of the Toolkit podcast, Bentley talked about how, at the time, following his experience with death and birth, he was thinking about what we actually remember from our own lives.

“We think about our life in turning points,” said Bentley. “And then yet looking back, you find that a lot of the most special moments are the more mundane — that random Saturday morning you spent with your family and you weren’t planning anything, and then it became one of the most special days of your lives together.”

A blueprint for how to string together ephemeral moments to create a sense of slipping through time in a less plot-driven way was what Bentley hoped to unlock by adapting the story of a quiet logger.

“I was thinking about the films that inspired me, that really changed my understanding of the form,” said Bentley. “I was  thinking about the films of [Andrei] Tarkovsky and [Abbas] Kiarostami, that find some rhythm of their own, that settle into this poetic rhythm, often the rhythms of nature. I wanted to make a film that would do for my uncle, or my grandparents, what [Robert] Bresson does for me.  They would never watch a Tarkovsky film, but trying to give them some version of what I get from those films.”

Robert’s life and the film are set against the dramatic changes that came with technological advances like the railroad, but “Train Dreams” is the inverse of what one comes to expect of these type of stories. Robert is not a man of his time, riding the wave of innovation, but more of an innocent bystander. Bentley felt a connection, having, in just his 40 years, grown up without the internet at home to being in this disorienting digital-smartphone-AI moment.

“I feel very much like Grainier at times where I’m just kind of being pulled along through life,” said the “Train Dreams” co-writer and director.

But how to mirror that in the narrative structure? “A big struggle with the adaptation and with making the film is trying to break it away from narrative form, where it’s not operating on this sense of, ‘Okay, there’s going be a inciting incident for this story, then a second act twist,’” said Bentley. “Trying to let the film take more of the form of life, while also making the audience feel like they’re being taken on a journey, that knows where it’s going.”

Finding that balance and framework would determine the film’s success. The first half of the film supplied the raw materials for the stringing together of these fleeting poetic moments with a sense of narrative thrust: Robert falls in love, builds a home, has a daughter, and is forced to leave his new family for far-off work, only to one day return to a tragic fire that marks the film’s midpoint.

The second half of the film, where Robert tries to find purpose in the hazy aftermath of grief, had the potential to feel more amorphous. According to Bentley, the arc of the second-half was based purely on the character’s emotional journey, and by design, would require constant restructuring, all the way through post-production.

“The book has one of the great endings in literature,” said Bentley, describing the scene where Robert travels to town and sees an adaptation of “Wolf Boy” performed on stage, which reflects back to him what he lost and changed in his own life. That scene was shot, and a short version of it is in the movie, but “it did not work [as the ending] for the film that I found I was making.”

What makes the “Train Dreams” script so successful is that it finds ways to adapt the internalized prose, but is also not anchored to them.

“[Editor] Parker [Laramie] and I were cutting, we got to that moment in the plane, and we got through that going into the end and I was like, ‘Oh, the film’s done. Emotionally, the film was over,” said Bentley of watching the film through the plane sequence. “You check with your partners, your producers, Greg and say, ‘I’m not crazy here. Right? This is the end?’ And everybody’s like, ‘Yeah, go for it.’”

‘Train Dreams’©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

Laramie and Bentley found ways to weave the book’s original ending, including “Wolf Boy” and seeing John Glenn become the first man to orbit the Earth, into the film. The final touch, though, was interspersing Robert’s memories into his joyous, climactic plane ride. Laramie and Bentley used alternate versions of scenes from earlier in the film. For example, in the beginning of the film, Robert tries to keep his two-year-old daughter’s attention with a magic trick involving a flower, but she walks away. In his memory on the plane, they used a take where she loved the trick.

“The majority of the takes [of the memories cut into the plane sequence] are either things we didn’t see earlier, or different takes, and part of that was to go back to this idea and this theme of memory being something that changes over your life,” said Bentley. “In the plane, it’s as if he’s remembering a sweeter version of that last moment with his kid than actually happened.”

For awards season, Bentley and Kwedar refuse to release an updated version of the now nominated screenplay to conform to the way the film is edited. That the script allowed for a blueprint to exand on the theme of what we remember from our lives is not a flaw, but a feature.

“Greg and I purposely left the script as it was written going into production,” said Bentley. “Because I like being able to read, for example, where did ‘Days of Heaven’ or ‘Goodfellas’ start, versus where they ended up. And I have to tell you, I think the opening of [‘Train Dreams’], as it was written, and the same as the ending, they were very good in the script. They just didn’t work as well in the film.”

To hear Clint Bentley‘s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.