The music video for the title track from the Train Dreams soundtrack offers new insight into making of the Netflix feature that stars Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones.
Featured at the end of the film of the same name, the song “Train Dreams” is performed by Nick Cave and counts Cave and the movie’s composer, Bryce Dessner,as co-writers. The music video can be seen below and is exclusive to The Hollywood Reporter.
Director Clint Bentley‘s film, which debuted on Netflix in November after premiering at Sundance, adapts Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella. The movie stars Edgerton as Robert Grainier, a logger in the Pacific Northwest who seeks to balance caring for his family while pursuing a living on the burgeoning railroad system.
“When we started thinking about making a song for the film, Nick felt like the perfect artist to do it,” Bentley explains. “It turns out that Train Dreams is one of his all-time favorite books, but he initially feared there wouldn’t be time to do something because he was getting ready to go on tour. Then he watched the film and was inspired to write something, and the whole thing came together really quickly.”
The filmmaker recalls first hearing some of Cave’s early lyrics for the song and being “a little bit overwhelmed by the whole situation,” given that he is a longtime fan of the musician. Cave is known for fronting the group Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, in addition to his work as a novelist, actor and film composer.
As for the first time Bentley heard the completed song, he says, “I was blown away. It surpassed anything I felt like it might be. It took all the feelings that I was trying to communicate at the end of the movie and expanded them into another place. I was so struck by how the song builds to the end when other voices start to drift in, as if on the wind. His lyrics are so evocative, and there’s a deep mystery to the song, especially when thinking about Grainier’s story. Every time I listen to it, I’m more moved by it.”
During a previous interview with THR, Dessner noted that Cave has been a musical hero for him and added, “The restraint of the film — there’s not a huge amount of dialogue. There’s a lot of space for him to come in at the end, and he says a lot in those three or four minutes.”