Train Dreams Is an Argument Against Complicity

"He lives with his wife and daughter on an isolated parcel of land in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. He does his job as a logger efficiently and quietly, working in companionable silence with most of his co-workers. He doesn't get drunk; he isn't in debt; he doesn't get involved in situations that don't immediately seem to pertain to him. In other words, he minds his own business."

"But Grainier's defining quality translates to inaction when a group of vigilantes attacks one of his co-workers. In the Denis Johnson novella the film is based on, that co-worker is a Chinese laborer accused of theft; Grainier tries to help kill him and believes that all his misfortune afterward is due to being cursed by the man, who escapes. In director Clint Bentley's adaptation, Grainier does nothing as his co-worker is attacked, and that moment of fear transforms into a lifetime of regret."

Joel Edgerton's Robert Grainier keeps his head down and lives with his wife and daughter on isolated land in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. He works quietly as a logger, avoids debt and drinking, and generally minds his own business. His inaction during a vigilante attack on a coworker becomes the defining moment of his life. In Denis Johnson's novella the coworker is a Chinese laborer who escapes after Grainier attempts to help kill him; in Clint Bentley's film Grainier does nothing and watches the man thrown over a gorge. The resulting guilt reshapes Grainier's life and underlines themes of helplessness, regret, moral responsibility, and the insignificance of individual legacies; only how people treat others ultimately matters.

Read at Vulture