Verdict: read the book and watch the film. The film is well acted and works as entertainment. Ultimately, however, it is a sanitized, ersatz version of a far richer and more powerful literary work. Book 9.5/10, film 8/10.
Is the film ever better than the book? A deep dive into the sanitized adaptation of a gritty American classic.
“It was the most cowardly and selfish of the many omissions that might have been counted against him in his early years.”
Michael Ondaatje described Denis Johnson’s novella Train Dreams as a “masterpiece”. I saw the film adaptation before I read the book. Having now read the novella, I agree. It is a masterpiece — one of brevity, using precisely the number of words it needs.
I have long admired an economical prose style, and Train Dreams delivers this with remarkable assurance. Comparable works of compressed, disciplined prose include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. All three convey large themes with an apparent simplicity that is anything but simple.
The novella explores universal themes without overexplaining them. Among these are the pace of change and the human cost it exacts; the interconnectedness of all things; and that the things we do, and fail to do, have karmic consequences.
In passing, the book also addresses taboo subjects — incest and bestiality — without sensationalism, presenting them simply as part of the moral and emotional landscape its characters inhabit.
Johnson invites the reader into the life of his central character, Robert Grainier. In 1893, Grainier arrives alone in the Idaho Panhandle, where he will spend most of his life. He has travelled by train from either Canada or Utah; his origin is uncertain. He is seven years old.
The old world is being displaced by the new. Grainier lives his life witnessing this rapid transformation with little understanding of either the world or himself. Johnson returns repeatedly to the theme of change and its human cost.
Grainier has the beginnings of a sense of the interconnectedness of things, including the trees he fells and cuts up to make his living. Johnson writes: “He liked the grand size of things in the woods, the feeling of being lost and far away, and the sense he had that with so many trees as wardens, no danger could find him.”
Grainier’s forester friend, old Arn Peeples, has a deeper understanding of this connection. Peeples observes: “It was only when you left it alone that a tree might treat you as a friend. After the blade bit in, you had yourself a war.”
The regular intrusion of the spirit world reinforces this sense of interconnection. Figures from Grainier’s past appear to him not as dramatic supernatural visitations, but as part of his ongoing reckoning with fate, responsibility, consequence, and understanding.
Grainier wonders about curses, his own culpability, and the price he has paid for what he has done — and failed to do. Johnson writes: “It was the most cowardly and selfish of the many omissions that might have been counted against him in his early years.”
The novella leaves much unsaid, allowing the reader space to ponder alongside him. In Grainier, Johnson has crafted a raw, deeply human, and unsettling character: a man capable of love and tenderness, but also cruelty, depravity, and callous disregard for others.
Visited by figures from the spirit world, Grainier intuits that his actions and omissions have consequences that he cannot escape.
The film adaptation uses a third-person narrator as voiceover. Used sparingly, this works reasonably well. At times the narrator quotes directly from the book; elsewhere, the story is carried — as it should be — by images and dialogue.
The film is competently directed, with effective use of visual imagery, and the Nick Cave soundtrack contributes a strong atmospheric presence. Performances are uniformly good, and the film largely succeeds in conveying the novella’s major themes.
However, there are significant omissions and alterations. The film entirely avoids the taboo subjects in the book. More importantly, Robert Grainier is rendered as a different kind of man.
In the film, he is characterized as an essentially good man genuinely perplexed by a rapidly changing world. His involvement in wrongdoing is framed as accidental or, at worst, inadvertent. When he rails against the injustice of paying too high a price for what he has done, the viewer is encouraged to sympathize with him.
In the book, Grainier is morally compromised. He acts willfully, bears greater guilt, and the karmic consequences visited upon him are more closely calibrated with his actions and omissions. When Grainier rails against his fate and the price he has paid, the reader is more likely to feel, “you had it coming…”.
This moral culpability is central to the novella’s power, tapping into a universal truth about choice and consequence. The reduction of this element in the film weakens both the central character and the adaptation.
The film also introduces acts of gratuitous violence not present in the book. It is unclear what purpose these serve, other than to simplify Grainier’s moral position and facilitate a “feel-good” ending. Rather than deepening the adaptation, they obscure and detract from the novella’s quieter, more unsettling elements.
There are also occasional lapses into exposition, where characters are required to speak information that the visual language of film could have conveyed more subtly. Fortunately, these are limited.
The Train Dreams film is well acted, competently directed, and effective as entertainment. It captures some of the atmosphere and many of the themes of Johnson’s novella, and it offers viewers a “feel-good” ending. But it ultimately smooths over the book’s rougher, more troubling edges.
Johnson’s Train Dreams is raw, morally complex, and deeply human, marked by restraint and ambiguity. The novella offers no “feel-good” ending. It leaves the reader with plenty to think about, as literature should. The film is sanitized and safe — an accomplished but ultimately ersatz version of a richer work.
Read the book. It is short and powerful. Watch the film too: it is well made and more comforting than the book, but it is the lesser work.
Book: 9.5/10
Film: 8/10
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