From Sundance: ‘Rebuilding’ is an Exquisite Portrait of Community

The serendipitous timing of Max Walker-Silverman’s melancholic “Rebuilding” cannot be overstated, released as the loss experienced from the Los Angeles fires reverberates through the news.

Josh O’Connor plays a Coloradan rancher named Dusty who, after losing his home to a wildfire, finds solace in a FEMA camp with others who have lost their homes. He balances his fluctuating relationship with his former wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy) and daughter Callie Rose (Lily LaTorre).

“Rebuilding” is an intimate and quiet film that allows its emotional beats pool in the audience through the slow pacing, much like Walker-Silverman’s debut feature, “A Love Song,” which premiered at Sundance in 2022. In the hands of other directors, such patience could easily bore an audience. Yet Walker-Silverman’s sincerity for the characters and the story is so palpable that viewers lose themselves in the hopeful yet omnipotent nature of the American West.

Such sincerity is born from the tragedy that Walker-Silverman and his family had to endure. In an interview with IndieWire, Walker-Silverman said that his grandmother’s house in Colorado burned down in a terrible fire, but that it “brought the family together.”

Walker-Silverman balances this devastation and magic in “Rebuilding” by immersing the viewers in a dialectic philosophy where destruction sows the seeds for the creation of a community.

O’Connor returns to his roots of playing quiet, reserved characters (for example, Arthur in “La Chimera” and Johnny Saxby in “God’s Own Country”) after his Oscar-snubbed role as the unkempt and cunning Patrick Zweig in “Challengers.” He adopts a boyish frame for Dusty as though his adulthood burned along with his house and masterfully expresses sorrow with his eyes while attempting to find meaning amid his loss. Yet he undergoes a slow and almost indiscernible transformation as he claims his new home and reignites his relationship with his family that only a seasoned actor can accomplish.

His family, Ruby and Callie Rose, are given the opportunity to rekindle their relationships with Dusty. Once Dusty’s assumed absence from the family is broken, a certain awkwardness can be felt in their family dynamic that holds not monstrosity but curiosity about this lost father figure. When Dusty appears at Ruby’s doorstep, she is quietly bewildered by his presence. Callie Rose and Dusty’s first outing together lingers in prolonged silences. But any community portrayed in “Rebuilding” welcomes curiosity with towers of kindness.

LaTorre’s child performance as Callie Rose hints at a very successful future in her career for her wistful characterization that captures the traits of both her fictional parents. Lahy as Ruby and her character’s mother Bess (Amy Madigan) are also wonderfully magnetic and comforting presences in Walker-Silverman’s world, acting as assiduous anchors for Dusty’s lost soul.

Beyond the complicated portrayal of family, the highlight of “Rebuilding” is the ensemble of actors in the FEMA camp that display the resilience and autonomy to choose hope when home is out of reach. What makes this ensemble so captivating and moving to discover is how they transmogrify the most minute instances of affection into an enriching renewal of an audience’s heart. Nancy Morlan and Kathy Rose as an elderly couple in the camp are particularly moving with their joyful screen presence.

Mother and widow Mali (Kali Reis) is the first of Dusty’s new neighbors to casually invite him to dinner among his new community played by a group of talented local actors. Reis plays Mali with the same dignity, grief, and skill as O’Connor, which makes her character beautifully earnest in a rare way.

Even the visual language of the film is poignant, with cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo bringing a delicate and tactile relationship to the San Luis Valley reminiscent of Robby Müller’s desert work in Wim Wender’s “Paris, Texas.” Salcedo understands the unpredictable sensibilities of nature and so visualizes the narrative with alternating shots of its monstrosity in barren woodlands and divinity through its enrapturing pink sunsets.

Walker-Silverman’s sophomore feature is proof that a director who cares about the material and understands the pulse of the film’s environment can create something universally captivating. “Rebuilding” is constantly gracious and kind, unlike many films, leaving a theater-going experience that can rejuvenate an indomitable faith in one’s own community.

—Staff writer Kai C. W. Lewis can be reached at kai.lewis@thecrimson.com.