Historically, the people who built the Pacific Northwest as we know it are frequently the ones we know the least about.
They’re the laborers who had to leave their loved ones behind for months, if not years, to collectively give their blood, sweat and tears to projects that are bigger than any one of them individually. Though rarely mentioned in history books or the stories we tell about the past, they remain the beating hearts that gave life to our troubled world.
In Train Dreams, director Clint Bentley’s visually breathtaking, locally shot film adaptation of the shattering Denis Johnson novella of the same name, it’s these everyday workers who instill each frame with stunning life. Itself a story about the people who were instrumental to the building of the region’s railroads in the early 20th century, it’s a work not just born out of the small corners of the state that bigger productions overlook, but made by a talented crew — many of whom call these places home…