Time, Part I: The Present
“He made the moon to mark the seasons,
and the sun knows when to go down.”—Psalm 104:19
“As he misplaced all sense of up and down, he felt, at last, connected to it all”—Train Dreams
It is so viciously hard, in our age, to look beyond what is right in front of us. Each new day brings headlines of violence across the world and, increasingly, close to home. Each glance at our screens encourages us to respond to these blatant evils by casting our frustrations into the void of social media rather than effective action or communal participation. “What will the coming year bring?” is a distant thought when “What will the next few hours bring?” is so pressing. It’s hard to mark the seasons when every day feels all-important.
The days are evil, that is to be sure. But we scarcely know how to make the most of our opportunities, so harried are we by what seems to be an eternal present. Some have referred to our experience as the tyranny of now. In his essay Post-Modernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Frederic Jameson describes it as “the waning of our historicity” that affects our sense of time. The present expands and “suddenly engulfs” us, Jameson writes, making it harder to see how past and future could possibly have bearing on this moment. The intensity of the present in turn causes us to lose our ability to act in time, to “make it a space of praxis.” We’ve misplaced all sense of time, and somehow, though we’re connected to it all, we’re only more alienated.
It’s not merely a matter of screens or social media, though they play an outsized role. We are losing our bearings on how to act in the world, how to live and create or express meaning in history. Perhaps we can only see the sharpest of actions as containing any meaning, so we vacillate between revolutionary fervor and impotent listlessness. Gone is any awareness of the long obedience in the same direction that Eugene Peterson exhorted. When everything is urgent, when everything matters right this instant, what good are small acts of vitality or care? We’ve lost our sense of what it means to cultivate.
Clint Bentley’s film is a call to meditate on space and time, on life and death, on the great mystery of all things.
The past movie year has brought us many films that speak boldly to our present moment, including many great ones. One Battle After Another, It Was Just an Accident, Sinners, and even Superman confronted the tyranny and injustice of the powerful head on, making little attempt toward subtlety in the process. We need these sorts of clarion calls, but we also need chances to breathe. That is what makes Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams such an absorbing, nourishing film. It is quiet, but that does not mean it is light. It is lovely, but that does not make it any freer from pain than those other films. It is a call to step back, to meditate on space and time, on life and death, on the great mystery of all things.
Based on Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella, Train Dreams follows the life of Robert Grainier from childhood through adulthood and to the end of his days, all of which are lived in the Pacific Northwest of Idaho and eastern Washington. Grainier (Joel Edgerton) is a logger, and he works with his hands to earn his keep, to build a home, and to make something simple but substantial of his life. We do not witness a moment in Grainier’s life; we witness the full arc of it. In fact, the film doesn’t really follow his life so much as invite us to share it with him. Time skips and memories recur, as images collect to form the substance of an individual life.
Time, Part II. Stepping Out of the Present
All creatures look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.
When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.
—Psalm 104:27-30
“Even though the old world is gone now, even though it’s been rolled up like a scroll and put somewhere, you can still feel the echo of it.”—Train Dreams
This is not a grand tale, but it contains the grandeur of humanity. Grainier’s life is unheralded in all respects. “His life ended as quietly as it had begun. He’d never purchased a firearm or spoken into a telephone. He had no idea who his parents might have been, and he left no heirs behind him.” Even throughout his life, Grainier’s never one to stop and wonder at the meaning of it all. He maintains a simple life, working and tending to his family as the world changes around him.
Train Dreams takes this clearcut man’s endeavors and weaves them into something timeless and evocative. There’s a consistent lack of dialogue throughout, but Will Patton’s voiceover acts as our guide. It is his voice that opens and closes the film, and provides the window into Grainier’s heart and mind, as well as into the world beyond. (The foundation of Edgerton’s performance is in his physicality and gestures, calmly giving expression to the film’s themes.) Patton’s words and Edgerton’s face speak with melancholy about the ways that time changes our lives. The world we live in now is not the same one into which we were born. We are not the same people we once were. And that transformation will continue, until it no longer does. “All creatures look to you,” the psalmist says to God, for provision and satisfaction and renewal. And yes, for death. “When you take away their breath, they die and return to dust.” If the psalmist here allows us to envision the sparrows, Moses leaves us no doubt in Psalm 90 that the same is true for humanity. “You turn people back to dust, saying ‘Return to dust, you mortals’” (Psalm 90:3).
We look to God for these things, and let us consider that this is also looking to God for timekeeping. Our birth and our death, at the ultimate extremes, are in his hands. But also daily provision, the demarcation of the seasons, the transmigrations of the sun and the moon. The seasons change, and we change, and God sustains us. We cultivate our lives, and our lives bear fruit in a thousand ways that testify to God’s faithful presence and our reflective creativity. But time is crucial for anything to grow, and our continued involvement is required. A framework of cultivation empowers us to see that our small acts, though they may seem impotent or pointless, contribute to the transformation of a world that is both beautiful and fleeting.
Timekeeping also includes history. The present has its place, but it cannot exist in isolation. It is not meant to be the vessel for all of our hopes and fears. Moses opens his prayer by observing, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations” (Psalm 90:1). All generations have been sustained through the greatest tyrannies and tragedies. Our own present age will someday be a distant past, and perhaps then humanity will be more ready to see its place in the river of history.
The World, Part I. Human Endeavors
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
All our days pass away under your wrath;
we finish our years with a moan.
—Psalm 90:8-9
“It upsets a man’s soul whether he recognizes it or not.”—Train Dreams
The film is set mainly in the early to mid-20th century, and Adolpho Veloso’s cinematography revels in the beauty of nature, highlighting the implications of humanity’s interactions with it along the way. On their own, these images take on an almost mystic quality: boots nailed, eye level, to a tree; a train crossing a bridge at night, its light diffuse in the steam from its engine; a fire watchtower looming out of place above a green field. As the film stitches these images together, they form a dialogue of their own that supplements the sparse script. They tell their own stories of the landscape and how we have altered it.
From his particular station in the world and in history, Grainier bears unwitting witness to the irrevocable transformation of the Pacific Northwest. The unending forests of his youth give way to a scarred landscape and dwindling woods. Forest fires seem ever more prevalent, and they take a heavy toll on his own life. Even his own endeavors become lost within the din of human striving. After spending his labor to build a bridge for a railroad company, the narrator tells us that “many years later, a bridge made of concrete and steel would be built ten miles upstream, rendering this one obsolete.” The work of slow craft and cultivation finds no home in a world of rapid industrialization and ever-changing technological improvements.
The tunnel vision of human ambition dims our sight to the ways we negatively affect the world around us. Train Dreams seeks to open our vision back up through its awe at the world’s beauty. Arn Peebles (William H. Macy) is an old man and a bit of a poet, or prophet, who joins some of the itinerant logging crews that employ Grainier. He warns the men that their work is a heavy burden “not just on the body but on the soul.” “The world is intricately stitched together, boys. Every thread we pull, we know not how it affects the design of things.”
This is where Train Dreams draws us back gradually into our present. The film calls us to step back from our present moment, but it never asks us to forget the weight that our choices have nor the concerns facing our world. Our iniquities are before us, as the psalmist confesses. Our acts of injustice and of harm toward others cannot be covered over, for they cultivate trouble and sorrow that grows the more we look away.
The World, Part II. The Great Mystery
Praise the Lord, my soul.
Lord my God, you are very great;
you are clothed with splendor and majesty
—Psalm 104:1
“You’d turn a corner and suddenly find yourself face-to-face with the great mystery, the foundation of all things.”—Train Dreams
But Train Dreams ultimately directs our attention toward beauty. It is a film made with, and effusive with, awe. The world is suffused with majesty and great mystery. And while Bentley’s film never inclines itself explicitly toward religion, there is a rapturous transcendence that it seeks to capture. For Christians, this encounter of transcendence is inseparable from our understanding of God’s glory. The world provides a reflection of his splendor, for it is an outpouring of his generative creativity. We need frequent reminders to attend to this beauty, to marvel in a wonder that leads us to worship
Robert Grainier’s life means little in the scales of history, but that doesn’t make it meaningless. Sharing the arc of his days, even in the short span of a couple hours, is a profound, moving experience. As Grainier lives and dies, we hear an echo of a reminder: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). Our lives are in God’s hands, but his hands are generous. We will not cheat death, but we can live with meaning and care in the lives we are given. We can act, we can grow, and we can love even as we grieve, as we falter, as we wonder.
Maybe our own lives are small. Maybe they don’t show up clearly under the wide lens of global politics or the movements of history. We leave our mark, all the same. On the world around us, on those we share our lives with. We are intricately stitched together. And through small acts of cultivation, we shape ourselves and others. The present doesn’t have omnipotence: the habits and rhythms we build have a greater power than we often see. But we are called to be responsible, to be faithful, to be creative and generative. In doing so, we reclaim our sense of time and of the world, and we bear witness to the great mystery and the splendor of God.
