“I am haunted by waters” is the perfect end to a perfect story, A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean. At times I’ve run across it and thought maybe it was a little melodramatic, which, out of context maybe it can be, but I’ve just finished reading the story again. And in context, it is perfect. I was drawn to this book again last night after watching Train Dreams, another beautiful movie from a slim novella, this one by Denis Johnson, that contends with the weight of a life in the Northwest. Hearing the last line of the movie, “But on that spring day, as he misplaced all sense of up and down, he felt, at last, connected to it all,” and looking at images of the cabin reclaimed by wilderness, I felt the almost perfect completion of the story arc. But I craved Maclean because I could see that they were reaching for the same thing and because I wanted to know what about Train Dreams felt so familiar to A River Runs Through It.
Setting
Though Robert Grainier is said in Train Dreams not to have made it much farther into Montana than Libby, the setting of both stories is similar, both in place and time, though the main action of A River Runs Through It covers a shorter span. Part of what I will always love about these movies, then, is that they remind me of where I grew up. More on imagery below, but there are moments in Train Dreams where I saw the specific texture of bark and the particular splay of needles and thought, “I know that tree!” Both do an excellent job of capturing the expanse of the quiet landscape of the Inland Northwest.
Imagery
Whereas I can no longer separate the film and book of A River Runs Through It, because they mirror each other so closely and because I’ve read and watched them so many times, I cannot remember reading Train Dreams, though I imagine it was a quiet book and meditative because the movie is this way (and you don’t usually remove the splashy bits when going from page to screen). What I will carry forward from Train Dreams is the imagery, which is perhaps even stronger than the imagery in A River Runs Through It (as beautiful as that was).
From early on in Train Dreams, Director of Photography Adolpho Veloso interweaves flashes of imagery including fire and Grainier’s wife and child. These force a pause in our experience of the forward time of the movie and also feel akin to the way memories recur to us at times they might be useful. They’re also gorgeous to look at and from early on in the film they left me wondering if they were the future or the past (or both). They’re definitely dreamlike.
On the other hand, my memory of A River Runs Through It is much more straightforwardly beautiful. The locations and actors are often stunning and sun-kissed, but naturally so with no artifice. Of course there is art in this, in all of it, and my memory of several scenes wouldn’t be so visceral without the images, but in re-reading the book, the guide for what to shoot and who to highlight is right there in Maclean’s prose.
Regret and Loss
“Lone white men of the west” is not usually a genre you go to for deep emotional resonance, not because there aren’t emotions buried there, but because it can sometimes feel like the story is presented for you to dig in and pull out the emotions that the author couldn’t quite face themselves. This is not true of Train Dreams or A River Runs Through It at all. Not to say that either are histrionic (at all), but they carry the weight and perspective of creators who have put in the emotional energy themselves and they are prepared to share that journey with you.
In the case of A River Runs Through It, you can feel in every word the lifetime that Maclean spent mulling over his brother’s story and his regret at not being able to save him. If you read carefully (as I tried to this morning), you find lines like, “He did not want any big brother advice or money or help, and, in the end, I could not help him” everywhere in the story. But rather than being repetitive, they reinforce the perspective that Maclean is writing from.
There’s also a retrospective voice in Train Dreams, and lines like “Money was tighter for them then than it ever had been. And though he didn’t know it then, he would always look back on this time in his life as his happiest” frame what you can expect from an emotional perspective while holding back the details of the plot.
Both stories deal extensively with loss and regret, something that could easily be over dramatized, but to my mind, both hit all the right notes to create resounding stories that it’s easy to connect with and to think about for a long time after.
Performances
I won’t name names, but both films contain actors I sometimes roll my eyes at because I’ve seen too many roles they’ve overplayed, but I can’t think of a single performance in either movie (except Stephen Shellen’s Neal in A River Runs Through It, but he’s supposed to be that way) that feels over the top. In fact, they are perfect, from the side characters to the mains, and they make it a genuine pleasure to sink into both movies. Particular favorites include Nathaniel Arcand as Ignatius Jack (TD), William H. Macy as Arn Peeples (TD), and Craig Sheffer as Norman Maclean (ARRTI).
It’s time for me to dry my eyes and go back to working on my own books, but what a relief it was to linger in something really good for a change. If you have read or watched something that felt perfect, please share it with me. I’d like to get used to this feeling.
My little filmmaker often wants to see a movie to celebrate his last day of school. This year we had the pleasure of seeing Disclosure Day and, after leaving the movie in the silence that follows something that really touches you, I felt compelled to re-watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind and think through some of the things Steven Spielberg is wrestling with and what he wants to tell us. There will be no spoilers here, just me on a journey to understand the humanity and art behind all of it.
I’m not educated enough in the language of film to really break it down (this isn’t the medium where I want to go too far behind the curtain, at least until my son takes me there), but there are strong threads that link Close Encounters with Disclosure Day, ways of framing a view, finding and tuning an emotional pitch (overwhelming us only to pull back hard and let us linger in a single moment).
What drew me to the series (beyond my husband’s recommendation) was how beautiful it is (and not just because they cast Lee Pace). The on-screen world is painterly (in one season expressly so as “Dusk” Cleon is actually painting the murals in his palace). What kept me there is the fascinating characters (especially Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin) and political machinations that made the world feel real and urgent. I kept thinking, “There must be so much more of this in the books! I must read the books!” I found the second two in a local Little Free Library, but it took me ages to actually order the first. What a surprise it was to finally read about this world I thought I knew.
The book is different. Not only is Gaal not a woman (almost no characters of consequence are), the character is incidental to the plot. In fact, most of the characters are incidental. As I was reading Foundation, I realized that part of what I’d loved about the series was the way the characters provided a touchstone for me as we hopped across planets and leapt forward in time over and over again. We lost a few of my favorites along the way, but there were always others I could lean on, knowing how their sympathies did and did not square with mine.