{"id":2018,"date":"2026-03-12T13:12:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T20:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/?p=2018"},"modified":"2026-03-15T17:40:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T00:40:18","slug":"the-things-we-say-without-words-train-dreams-sentimental-value-past-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/?p=2018","title":{"rendered":"The Things We Say Without Words: Train Dreams, Sentimental Value & Past Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Oscars<\/a> are often awarded to big, talky American movies full of rapid-fire dialog and insistent energy. But this year\u2019s Best Picture nominees<\/a> include powerful but quiet films that inspire deep emotion thanks to strong but subtle performances. Both Train Dreams<\/a>, <\/em>directed and co-written by U.S.-born director Clint Bentley<\/a>, and Sentimental Value<\/a>, <\/em>a Norwegian film directed and co-written by Joachim Trier<\/a>, create their magic using surprisingly few words. The same was true of Past Lives<\/a><\/em>, Korean-born director Celine Song<\/a>\u2019s moving 2023 Best Picture Oscar nominee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Train Dreams<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Train Dreams <\/em>is rich with lush and imposing scenes of rural Washington State, which stands in for Idaho ably thanks to Adolpho Veloso<\/a>\u2019s Oscar-nominated cinematography. Indeed, beautiful but often-dangerous nature plays such an important element in the story, one could almost say that the landscape is one of the film\u2019s main characters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joel Edgerton<\/a>\u2019s understated performance as logger and railway worker Robert Granier is at the heart of the story. He uses few words but conveys deep feeling through gesture, tone, and his heartbreakingly expressive face. Edgerton was well cast in this role, since he\u2019s especially gifted at expressing sadness, loss, or pain in a compelling way, without making a big, bold fuss of it. His isn\u2019t a flashy kind of charisma, but he draws us in for exactly that reason. It\u2019s his quiet quality that draws us closer, since we don\u2019t want to miss a word. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The arc of the film, which is based on Dennis Johnson\u2019s novella<\/a>,  includes a good deal of difficulty and lost opportunity. The story\u2014full of love, loss, and longing\u2014is episodic. It moves through a series of Granier\u2019s introductions to people who connect, deeply but often briefly, to the introspective, quiet, often lonely man. Most are themselves introverted and comfortable being on their own for vast stretches of time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Granier and those who move through his life connect to each other quietly but profoundly, without a lot of talk or explanation. They bond over shared kindness, sincerity, and modesty. We don\u2019t need to be told that these are good people; we can see and feel who they are through their actions. The film does include narration, but it\u2019s not overly intrusive. The writers trust the audience to be able to read into the characters\u2019 words and actions without a lot of wordy exposition. The script doesn\u2019t explain the characters\u2019 motivations or backstory more than necessary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stellan<\/a>
Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd and Elle Fanning in Sentimental Value<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sentimental Value<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Swedish actor\u00a0Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd<\/a>\u00a0brings his own quiet intensity to\u00a0Sentimental Value<\/em>, which has earned him his first Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination. He portrays a famous and much-admired film director who has always had difficulty connecting emotionally with the people he loves most.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sentimental Value <\/em>begins by introducing us to the house at the center of the story. Just as the landscape of rural Idaho plays an important role in Train Dreams<\/em>, the Borg house in <\/a>Sentimental Value<\/a> <\/em>is an essential character from beginning to end. The film begins by introducing us to the house in the many forms it\u2019s taken over the previous century, easing us into the story through soft humor and just enough back story. Then the players take over, speaking to each other naturally in Norwegian, Swedish, English, and Danish by turns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film is very Nordic in tone, not only because of the location and primary languages spoken, but because of how much of the story is unspoken. The feelings are clearly there, but expressed over time, and through movements\u2014the slow spread of emotions across a face, the silent exchange of looks between people, the mounting realization of what is about to happen based on seemingly simple, everyday movements that all add up to something shocking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Skarsg\u00e5rd is a master of discomfort. In so many of his best roles, we understand how he\u2019s feeling not because of the words he says, or even the way he says them, but by the way he shifts in his chair and diverts his attention away from things he doesn\u2019t want to deal with. He looks silently into his lap, unable and unwilling to say the one thing that most needs to be said. Here, as in his masterful performance as Detective John River in the excellent 2015 British TV miniseries River<\/a> <\/em>(not to be confused with the 2012 horror series The River<\/em>) Skarsg\u00e5rd is comfortable inhabiting discomfort. In each role, he plays a highly skilled and insightful professional. As both Gustav Borg and John River, his characters’ most intense pain comes from the emotional reticence that they must face before solving their greatest professional challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Teo<\/a>
Teo Yoo and Greta Lee in Past Lives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Past Lives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

South Korean-born Canadian director Celine Song<\/a>\u2019s debut film, Past Lives<\/em>, has much in common tonally with the films mentioned above. Nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscars two years ago, this film shows similar restraint. Its dialog, which is mostly in Korean, is spare. Its most important feelings are often left unexpressed, but made clear to the audience in the spaces between words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Past Lives<\/em> focuses on two characters, Nora and Hae Sung, close childhood friends in South Korea who lost track of each other when Nora\u2019s family moved to the U.S. We first see them together in childhood, clearly enjoying being in each other\u2019s company, but often doing so silently, or while sharing few words. We next meet up with them some two decades later, when they reconnect online, then decide to meet in person. Though some important dialog is spoken aloud, much of what passes between them is expressed through silences\u2014eloquent and beautiful ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw Sentimental Value <\/em>shortly before Past Lives. <\/em>While watching actors Greta Lee<\/a> and Teo Yoo<\/a> give such moving performances in the latter, I was struck by the similarity between Nordic films<\/a> (such as those by Joachim Trier and Ingmar Bergman<\/a>) and Celine Song\u2019s film. Though outwardly quite different in style and subject matter, they share a great deal in their characters\u2019 comfort with silences, and in the stories\u2019 ability to express deep feelings with few words. Both Trier and Song were born into cultures that prize emotional restraint, comfort with silence, and the belief that scenes built on tacit understanding often convey more than a page of emotionally heated dialog can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When expressed by talented and thoughtful writers, directors, and actors, a spare script with limited dialog can allow actors to shine if they have the restraint and comfort with nuance that makes these three films so special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At top:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Felicity Jones and Joel Edgerton in the 2025 film <\/em>Train Dreams<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2025 Oscar nominees Train Dreams and Sentimental Value, and 2023 nominee Past Lives, create magic using few words<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1676,1675,1677,1678,1668,37,1658,1667,1655,1656,1657,544,1663,1661,1666,1674,1662,1664,1671,1672,1673,1653,1670,1669,1660,1665,1659],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2018"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2075,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018\/revisions\/2075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}