The ‘Train Dreams’ Wars Are Here. Wait, What?

Over the weekend, Clint Bentley’s lovely, delicate, and moving period drama, Train Dreams , debuted on Netflix — and a certain corner of the social-media world went totally insane. To be clear, I include myself in this group. The particular nature of our various debates is largely irrelevant, and, in fact, it was multifaceted. Some of us argued about the film’s use of voice-over. (Too much? Too beholden to the novel? Too lazy? Just right?) About the title. (Silly? Haunting? Too … train-y?) About the nature of its adaptation. (You should read Roxana Hadadi’s excellent piece on that here .) About the Nick Cave song over the end credits (which I’m not sure even I can defend). And there were also invariably people arguing about the fact that we were arguing about Train Dreams . I’m not