I hate to call something that “the movie people need right now”, it’s hard to think of Max Walker-Silvermans “Reconstruction“In other terms at the moment. A free but deeply noticeable sketch of a drama about a divorced Colorado Rancher (a hanging dog Josh O’Connor) To try to understand what he has left in the wake of a devastating forest fire, the story is as mild as the rest of Walker-Silverman’s work (ie 2022 years “A love song“), And yet honest enough to count on the heartache of losing their home. In fact, it is only because “rebuilding” is so raw in its pain that it can be resolved to such an effective comforting conditioner; the film Starts with generations of memories such as pyr in 1,000 acres of burnt soil, and from the ashes saves a new foundation on which its characters in a credible way could create the next repetition of their lives.
The farm owner is a man named Dusty – at least that’s what he has called himself. Makes him feel more like a cowboy than “Thomas”, I guess. His grandparents built the cattle ranch where he lived before the fires, the one with the fantastic view and the bright blue barn that smaches in the middle. There was a time when Dusty’s ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy) and their young daughter Callie-Rose (Australian newcomer Lily Latorre, a wonderful find) lived there too, but it’s been over a while now.
Ruby claims that he “did not apply himself”, but I suspect that Dusty simply did not apply enough to her and Callie-Rose; Judging by the silent anxiety that sinks over O’Connor’s face on the livestock auction that begins the film, Dusty really seems to have been invested in its livestock. You can anything but see life seeping out of him – or a Life seeps out of him anyway. “Can you even be a cowboy without cows?” Someone asks. Dusty is not so sure.
Even worse: He doesn’t have the slightest idea of what he might be more. Dusty is so married with a certain picture of himself that his first thought after the fire is to take a part -time ranch job some states away. Ruby and Callie-Rose live in the next city where Dusty’s ranch once was located, but it seems that close to his daughter is not a crucial part of his self-identity-or for the family heritage he has devoted himself to continuing.
It will gradually begin to change when Dusty mourns what he has lost forever and finds out what he still has left. “You get what you get” is a regular chorus, a kind of motto for Ruby’s mother (Amy Madigan, lovely in a role that turns out to be a little too comfortable for such a naturalistic script), and Dusty spends most of this movie trying Understand his part.
It’s not easy for him. He moves into a trailer park on a Fema camp with about a dozen other people who lost their houses in the fire (some of which lost much more than that), and yet no one of Dusty’s new neighbors seems really paralyzed by the entire trial. Not even Mila (an eminent credible Kali Reis), whose man ran into the flames and never came out.
Do not hold the breath for him to emerge at a decisive moment – it is clear from the beginning of Jake Xerxes Fussell’s tender acoustic score that “rebuilding” will not be as action -packed as the title suggests. Some movies are verbs; This is of course a noun. Walker-Silverstein prefers to express their characters through texture rather than incidents, and although it would be obviously false to say that nothing “happens” in his latest movie (not in a movie where we repeatedly see Josh O’Connor work as A cross -guard for buffalo!), is the story it tells best defined by what does not.
Dusty does not receive a loan to rebuild the rank, as the land will not be able to grow for at least the next 10 years. He does not disturb Ruby’s current relationship, or do something to rewind the clock to when they were married. He does not even unpack the cartons in his trailer, because he just can’t be able to accept that all this cannot be reversed in any way. The home should be forever – that’s what makes it at home. Even if you move, it should still be there.
But when Dusty starts spending more time with callie-rose-often sitting in the parking lot at the local library so they can absorb its WiFi signal-and tie generous friendships with the rest of the displaced people in the trailer park (played by a warm and memorable Collection of non-professional actors, including Sharon Jones & Dap Kings musician Binky Griptite), “Rebuilding” gets a lasting force from all the perishables it collects along the way. Even the film’s most schematic moment makes it feel as if Walker-Silverman simply digs something that was already there.
Madigan’s character devotes most of his time to remind Dusty of what he has forgotten, and to introduce rough details that he may not know. It is because of her that Dusty has reason to reflect on her grandparents, who just created it “forever home” that he is so determined to rebuild because they left Ireland and started themselves. And in a particularly awesome scene that manages to survive because of her thematic weight, it is because of her that Dusty is convinced that memory can be a heritage of its own – one that can be seeded even when it feels like nothing else will ever to take root again.
“Rebuilding” contains a number of crucial moments that may seem particularly constructed in a movie where everything else is so unquestioned, but O’Connor’s implosive performance helps keep everything grounded to earth. While Fahy is tasked with playing most of the big “A” here (a task she performs without a false note), O’Connor can be found in virtually every frame, often stare at the dirt or pee at the horizon. There are times when it feels like Dusty is a little more than a cowboy hat in search of a character, but O’Connor’s uncertainty with marble mouth reflects Dusty’s resistance to change. It is as if the guy is so reluctant to imagine a different future than the one he first thought he can’t even get through a meaning if he has not all mapped in advance.
O’Connor can do more with an easy shaking on their heads than some actors could do with a whole Shakespeare monologue, and “rebuilding” is never more nuanced or humane than when you can feel dusty withdraw from Mila and the others The souls in Fema Park, afraid that every step he took forward would take him so much further away from going back.
But Callie-Rose can’t help but encounter that idea, if so just to raise a child-if we can call it that-is its own form of reconstruction. And although Dusty is not the type that recognizes this loudly, it inevitably has an in -depth effect on him to see his daughter make new friends and lose his own valuable things.
In fact, life is nothing but a constant series of end and beginning; Change is the only constant, clumsy whatever it sounds, and while “rebuilding” ends far from asking its characters to be grateful for their accident, a lasting sense of hope from the opportunity they are given to relive which home can mean.
How do you build something that lasts in a world where climate change can, has and will continue to delete the history of the century directly from the map? When the threat of another tragic forest fire is not a matter of “about”, but “when?” “It’s fun,” says someone, “The things you pack and the things you leave.” This silently influencing little film finds really gripping in paying attention to what these things are, and – in the end – in forging them together so that someone else can have the gift of mourning these ruins one day.
Rating: B+
“Rebuilding” premiered in 2025 Sundance Film festival. It is currently seeking distribution in the United States.
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