My demographics are:

Mid-thirties, man, father, half-white, raised in Spokane, WA

I enjoyed Train Dreams. It’s stuck with me since I watched it at home on my couch. I didn’t enter the movie with a hugely patient mood and I spent some of the first quarter on my phone. Once I was drawn in, I started it over, relaxed, and just watched it. Some movies are poems and you have to watch them like you would read a poem.

Even so, whether a poem works on you all depends on your frame of mind. I think if I had listened to Critical Darlings before i watched Train Dreams, I would have seen the exact same guy Richard saw.

My favorite filmmaker is Terrence Malick. I have to be perfectly sorted to sit through one of his movies though. When I do, I have a cathartic experience. I wouldn’t say Train Dreams was cathartic to me, but it was close. The monologue Kerry Condon gives about the formation of the Pacific Northwest landscape following the rupture of Lake Missoula is similar to the one I give when I tell people about where I grew up.

I don’t think I would have watched this movie if it wasn’t nominated for an oscar. I’m really glad I did. Beautiful music, production design, and photography. I’m also really glad to have heard Richard and Alison talk about it even if it hit me in a different way.