When Joel Edgerton tried to explain to his wife what Train Dreams was about, he had a hard time getting the words out.

It wasn’t that the actor didn’t believe in the story — he’d been a fan of Denis Johnson’s novella for years, and had long wanted to be a part of making it into a film. Rather, it was difficult for him to tell his wife about the depths of grief that his character, Robert Grainier, would have to explore. It brought to the surface his own darkest fears. 

But, Edgerton tells Tudum, realizing that this film would make him confront his own emotional vulnerability was how he knew it was the right project for him. “I always like to say that the reason to go to work is to be challenged, to challenge yourself, and to do things that are a little bit frightening,” he says.

Directed by Clint Bentley, with Johnson’s novella adapted by Bentley and Greg Kwedar, Train Dreams is the story of one man’s journey as he navigates what Edgerton describes as “the ups and downs, the joys and the sorrows of life.” Robert Grainier is, in many ways, a simple man, living in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900s, a time of almost unimaginable change and progress. He works hard at his job, he builds a home and has a family; he experiences deep love and profound loss, and the world keeps turning.

“I think the film is saying that, despite all the things that knock us down, human beings are incredibly good at standing back up,” Edgerton says. “We know how to live and breathe, and we know how to absorb the world around us, and we know how to face the world we’re living in.”

Of course, it’s one thing to reflect on a life while you’re at the end of it, but, Edgerton points out, part of the power that comes from watching Train Dreams is that there is no feeling of remove — we’re immersed in Robert’s life just as we’re immersed in our own.

“We get to watch Robert live out his entire life, and we get to watch that story from somewhere in the middle of our lives,” Edgerton says. “We are all still alive watching Robert’s story unfold, and we get to watch him reflect on his entire life and realize that it was a mix of all these things. I wonder if it gives us this hopeful feeling that we still have years to live, and we can still do good things, and we can embrace joy after sorrow. … It’s all worth it. It’s all fucking worth it.”

Below, Edgerton talks about confronting his fears, the beauty of community, and the power of people who “only choose to speak when it’s really important.”

How did you first become connected to Train Dreams?

Joel Edgerton: I had been given the book by somebody I had worked with as a wrap gift. I read the novella, and I was immediately really taken with it. So much so, I actually inquired about the rights for the book.

And then realized, of course, somebody had their hands on it, and so I just put it aside in my mind. Cut to years later, I get a call about these guys making the film. I was a bit excited that it was even coming around toward me and also a bit nervous, because I knew it would not be the easiest thing to put on the screen, because it spans such a broad period of time and investigates a lot of really subtle, deep things about life, and it would take a very careful hand to transform the book into a film.

And then I found out it was Clint and I watched his film Jockey. And I was like, “Oh, this guy’s an incredible filmmaker, and he obviously knows how to write.”

So it was one of those rare situations where all the elements — the story, the filmmaker and the fact that he’s an auteur, that he’s a very clever writer — all those elements coming together made it feel almost too good to be true. And I very quickly got together with Clint, and we had a couple of meetings, and it all felt like it was the right thing, and I felt like I was the right person to play this character.

What was it like to embody someone who doesn’t always express himself verbally but still manages to encompass the complete spectrum of human emotions? 

Edgerton: Quite often, we’re used to watching characters onscreen who are full of action, as in they’re creating their own destiny and they’re pushing against obstacles, and they’re fighting adversity, or they’re fighting adversaries. I’ve been through the experience of making a movie, Loving, in which I was playing a character who is both incredibly brave, courageous, and strong, but [also] a man of very few words.

I remember realizing that sometimes the people really worth listening to are the ones who only choose to speak when it’s really important. And that people of few words often can be very potent and fascinating to watch. 

On a broader scale, I think that the larger percentage of the human race aren’t dynamically active people. We are at the whim of the world around us, the events that happen to us, the situation we’re born into, the skills that we’re allowed to learn based on the kind of environment we grew up in, and the families we grew up in, and the communities that we were raised in. Sometimes I think the majority of us are pushed around by the world.

What were the challenges you faced in playing a character who is, in fact, at the whims of the world? And gets quite pushed around by it?

Edgerton: When I first read the novella, I was just a guy with no responsibility — I wasn’t a father. But then when Clint came to me, I had had twins — one-and-a-half-year-old twins by the time I had the first meeting with Clint. 

So going back and reading the novella and reading the screenplay, I realized that I was also asking myself, “Was I willing to play Robert, knowing that it was facing my greatest fear?”

Because the biggest blow that Robert suffers on the journey of his life is the one of grief, and I remember turning to my now-wife, and I started telling her in my own words what the novella was about, and I realized it was almost hard for me to get the words out when it came to the element of the story that deals with grief.

And I thought, “Well, I always like to say that the reason to go to work is to be challenged, to challenge yourself, and to do things that are a little bit frightening, hopefully.” Because that makes it all the more interesting and all the more worthwhile to see what you can bring out of yourself.

For me, I felt, on one hand, it was going to be really hard to do some of the things that were required of me for the film. And at the same time, perhaps it would all be a bit too easy, in that those fears are very much inside of me all the time based on the short few years that I’ve had my kids with me.

The film also demonstrates that it isn’t only people who live big, notable lives who deal with profound grief — it’s all of us. The human experience is one of both loss and then also the exultation of love.

Edgerton: Part of the beautiful thing about us as human beings is that we hang out with each other, we form families and community. And in that sense, none of us are ever going to get through life and avoid having, at some point, to face grief. 

Actually, what Clint and I discussed a lot, and I think it’s in the DNA of the book, is that as you stand back at the end of the film and look at Robert’s entire life, it is — as all our lives are — a mix of the most beautiful of things and the worst of things and everything in between.

It leads you to this feeling that even though life can be awful, life can also be extremely, profoundly beautiful. And when you add it all up, for all the blows you might have absorbed in life, it ultimately is worth living. Through Robert, we see resilience and regrowth. We see his ability to absorb these things and keep going, as we all have to do.

We have a life, we live it out: Some of it is good, some of it is bad. At the end of the day, the movie really illuminates the beauty of life despite some of the things that we’ve faced within it. And that it is a profoundly wonderful thing to have — that gift of an entire life, that collection of memory.

Is that what spoke to you most about this story as a whole?

Edgerton: There’s a real relatable engine to this movie, in that Robert is somebody who is absorbing the blows of the world, and moving in the streams and avenues that he’s allowed to move in, based on the life that he’s been given and the upbringing. I think there’s a real potency to the quiet, ordinary life that most of us live.

There’s this idea that this film somehow, through the examination of an ordinary life, speaks to how insignificant on one hand we all are and yet how significant a part we play in the world that we live in, in the short space of time that we’re given on the planet.

Whether we’re builders or thinkers or writers, or whether we’re craftspeople or we’re in the medical field, we all are doing something in the time that we are here, and we all have a story to tell. And if you choose to find out about anybody’s life, there’s something fascinating underneath the hood.

Corey Castellano/Netflix

Robert spends a good amount of time in solitude, but he doesn’t go on his journey through life alone. 

Edgerton: Despite [which] era we grew up in, despite whether we’re surrounded by modern things, I think the nature of human beings is that we’re there to support each other. And I think that really resonates in the film too, in a way that we can relate to now.

What do you hope audiences take away from Train Dreams?

Edgerton: I think while we’re watching Robert Grainier’s story, there is so much [there] for any person, anywhere in the world, to say, “Oh, that’s my life.” Or “I’ve been through that” or “I can relate to this. I’ve been through that experience.”

And in that sense, I feel like it’s the most I’ve ever been involved in a film that gets close to the arena of examining the meaning of life. I’m not saying that the film is going to tell you what the meaning of life is, or what the meaning of your life is. But I think in the exploration of Robert’s life, we get to understand a little bit about what is valuable about life, and how important it is, and how significant it is, the life that we get to live.

Train Dreams is streaming on Netflix now.

Joel Edgerton Talks Train Dreams, His Father’s Advice, and More on Skip Intro