“It’s funny, the things you pack and the things you leave,” says Dusty (Josh O’Connor) to a friend in the aftermath of the wildfire that destroyed his family ranch in Max Walker-Silverman’s stirring drama, Rebuilding.
Though the film has been in the works for several years, timing is sometimes a strange thing. It felt odd to watch the premiere in the very week residents of Pacific Palisades and Alta Dena, CA were allowed back into their neighborhoods to see what nature’s wrath left behind. For Walker-Silverman, the idea came from personal experience after his grandmother’s home burned in a wildfire. His first feature, A Love Song, premiered at Sundance in 2022. In his second, he returns to the Colorado landscape he calls home.
Rebuilding does not focus on the fire itself, one that destroyed Dusty’s Colorado home and a thousand others. Instead, it is the story of what comes next, of putting lives back together, of finding a reason to keep moving forward after unimaginable loss.
British star Josh O’Connor has been everywhere in recent years. He played Mr. Elton in Autumn de Wilde’s adaptation of Emma. He was nominated for Emmys for his work as Prince Charles in the third and fourth seasons of The Crown and won for season four. Last year, O’Connor secured his place as one of New Hollywood’s stars as a struggling tennis pro opposite Zendaya and Mike Faist in Challengers. He might not have been an obvious choice to play a haunted, bereaved cowboy, and yet he delivers one of his finest performances so far.
In Rebuilding, O’Connor’s Dusty is a divorced father who, after two months of couch surfing and sleeping in his truck, finally resigns himself to accept a FEMA trailer in a temporary camp with other displaced locals. Unable to work his own land, he also has a temporary job with the highway department, holding a sign to direct traffic around road construction zones. Everything about Dusty’s current situation is temporary and he struggles with what comes next.
There is something very special about O’Connor’s performance here. Dusty lived and worked on an inherited ranch that had been in the family for generations. A loan officer at the bank tells him it will be 8-10 years before the land can provide again. For Dusty, this compounds his loss and leaves him with few options besides a cousin in need of a ranch hand somewhere in Montana, though all he really wants to do is rebuild. O’Connor is able to convey so much of Dusty’s grief, helplessness, and isolation with few words. In an early scene, he watches sadly as the last of his cattle are sold at auction. In another, he stands on the edge of his property, takes a deep breath, and ventures into the burned out remains of the woods to see what’s left of his house. He gazes across the desolate landscape from the porch of his trailer, resisting conversation with the neighbors until he can no longer avoid it.
The makeshift neighborhood sits in a field far from anything that could catastrophically burn. Everyone here has lost so much, and all but Dusty have settled in to turn the temporary housing into something that resembles stability. Among them is strong-willed and resilient Mali, played by Kali Reis (True Detective: Night Country). Mali is a unifier and her persistence pays off when Dusty finally starts to join in some of the communal trauma-bonding, group dinners, and general neighborliness. These relationships are good for the man who knows he has lost a lot, but avoids letting himself truly grieve because others lost so much more.
Across town, Dusty’s ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy of The White Lotus) lives with her mother Bess (Academy Award nominee Amy Madigan). Dusty and Ruby grew up together and share a young daughter, Callie Rose, played by a wise-beyond-her-years Lily LaTorre (Run Rabbit Run). Since the fire, Dusty hasn’t been around much, but when he shows up at their house one afternoon with nowhere else to go, Ruby sees this as an opportunity to nudge him toward reconnecting with his daughter.
In order to rebuild anything — a home, a business, a life — it’s important to remember what it was, and also to let go of the things that can’t come back. This idea is threaded throughout the script, which Walker-Silverman also wrote. Floods of memories can come suddenly and from unexpected places. Sorting through some long-forgotten photographs at Bess’s kitchen table, Dusty and Ruby talk about the things they remember losing and the things they don’t. “There are things we lost that I’ll never remember,” Dusty says. “I really miss those things.”
Given the recent tragedies in California, Florida, North Carolina and elsewhere, Rebuilding sounds like the last thing anyone might want to watch right now. As we see more and more of our friends and neighbors displaced by natural disasters, the idea of watching fictional characters endure similar hardships might seem like too much. But the beauty of this film is that it is so full of hope. In the face of unprecedented tragedy, we have seen people come together to help one another. We hear the promises and the determination to carry on, to keep going and not to give up. In its quiet, tender way, Rebuilding celebrates the ones who stay, without judging the ones who choose to leave. Timing is everything, and this film arrives right when we need it.
Grade: A
This review is from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival where Rebuilding had its world premiere. The film is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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