The cult built around the late author Denis Johnson is rooted in a rare fusion of poetic beauty and raw, gritty depictions of damaged lives. Writing about hobos, addicts and the disenfranchised, Johnson gave lyrical voice to the United States’ drifters. His spare, phantasmagorical prose in works such as Angels and Jesus’ Son made him the laureate of literary losers.
But Johnson’s stories can be surprisingly tricky to hammer into movies. His own screenplays for the director Steven Shainberg met with middling responses. Alison Maclean’s adaptation of Jesus’ Son was a prize winner at Venice, but Claire Denis’s haphazard version of The Stars at Noon was roundly booed at Cannes.
In the months since its Sundance debut, Clint Bentley’s note-perfect film version of Train Dreams, a much-admired Johnson novella, has emerged as an awards-season dark horse. The feature, which has earned comparisons with Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, was snapped up by Netflix after that Utah screening.
“I wanted to stay true to the spirit of the book but also allow the film to be its own piece of art,” Bentley says.
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