Loath as I am to label anything as “the movie people need right now,” it’s hard to think of Max Walker-Silverman’s “Reconstruction“In other terms at the moment. A spare but deeply familiar sketch of a drama about a divorced Colorado Rancher (a hangdog Josh O’Connor) trying to make sense of what he has left in the wake of a devastating wildfire, the story is as gentle as the rest of Walker-Silverman’s work (i.e. 2022’s “A love song”), And yet honestly honest enough to reckon with the heartache of losing one’s home. Indeed, it is only because “reconstruction” is so raw in its pain that it can dissolve into such an effectively comforting balm; the film Beginning with generations of memory melting into 1,000 acres of scorched earth, rescuing from the ashes a new foundation upon which its characters can credibly create the next iteration of their lives.
Rancher is a man named Dusty – at least, that’s what he’s taken to calling himself. Makes him feel more of a cowboy than “Thomas”, I guess. His grandparents built the cattle house where he lived before the fires, the one with the big view and the light blue barn 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) also lived there, but it’s been over for a while now.
Ruby claims he “didn’t apply himself”, but I suspect Dusty just didn’t apply himself enough to her and Callie-Rose; To judge by the silent anguish that descends over O’Connor’s face at the cattle auction that opens the film, Dusty seems genuinely invested in his cattle. You can all but see the life seeping out of him – or a The life is seeping out of him, though. “Can you even be a cowboy without cows?” someone asks. Dusty isn’t so sure.
Even worse: He doesn’t have the slightest idea what else he might be. Dusty is so wedded to a certain image of himself that his first thought after the fire is to take a part-time government job a few states away. Ruby and Callie-Rose live in the next town over where Dusty’s ranch once stood, but it seems that being close to his daughter isn’t a defining part of his self-identity—or to the family legacy he’s dedicated to continuing.
That will gradually begin to change as Dusty mourns what he has lost forever and finds out what he still has left. “You get what you get” is a common refrain, a motto of sorts for Ruby’s live-in mother (Amy Madigan, lovely in a role that proves too comfortable for such a naturalistic script), and Dusty spends most of this the film tries to understand his part.
It won’t come easy for him. He moves into a trailer park in a FEMA campground with about a dozen other people who lost their houses in the fire (some of whom lost a lot more than that), and yet none of Dusty’s new neighbors seem as paralyzed by the whole ordeal. Not even Mila (an eminently believable Kali Reis), whose husband ran into the flames and never got out.
Don’t hold your breath for him to show up at a key moment—it’s clear from the openings of Jake Xerxes Fussell’s tender acoustic score that “rebuilding” won’t be as action-packed as the title suggests. Some movies are verbs; This one is obviously a noun. Walker-Silverstein prefers to express his characters through texture rather than incident, and while it would be patently false to say that nothing “happens” in his latest feature (not in a film where we repeatedly see Josh O’Connor working as a Crossing Guard for Buffalo!), the story it tells is best defined by what it doesn’t.
Dusty does not get a loan to rebuild the ranch, as the land will not be arable for at least the next ten years. He doesn’t interfere with Ruby’s current relationship, or do anything to rewind the clock back to when they got married. He doesn’t even pack the boxes into his trailer, because he just can’t bring himself to accept that all of this is somehow not reversible. Home should be forever – that’s what makes it 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 of the local library so they can siphon off their WiFi signal—and forge generous friendships with the rest of the displaced people in the trailer park (played by a warm and memorable ensemble of non-professional actors, including Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings musician Binky Griptite), “Rebuilding” derives a lasting power from all the ineptitude it collects along the way. Even the film’s most sketchy moments feel like Walker-Silverman is simply discovering something that was already there.
Madigan’s character spends most of his time reminding Dusty of what he has forgotten and to introduce trenchant details he may not have known. It is because of her that Dusty has reason to reflect on his grandparents, who only created the “Forever Home” that he is so determined to rebuild because they left Ireland and started over themselves. And in a particularly unfortunate scene that manages to survive on the strength of its thematic weight, it’s because of her that Dusty is convinced that memory can be a legacy that is all—one that can be reclaimed even when it feels like nothing else will ever take root again.
“Rebuilding” contains a number of defining moments that might seem particularly jarring in a film where everything else is so unforced, but O’Connor’s implosive performance helps keep everything grounded. While Fahy is tasked with most of the capital “A” acting here (a task she pulls off without a false note), O’Connor can be found in virtually every frame, often staring at dirt or skin on the horizon. There are times when it feels like Dusty is little more than a cowboy hat in search of a character, but O’Connor’s marble-mouthed uncertainty reflects Dusty’s resistance to change. It’s like the guy is so unwilling to imagine a future other than the one he first envisioned that he can’t even get through a sentence unless he has the whole thing mapped out ahead of time.
O’Connor can do more with a little shake of the head than some actors could with an entire Shakespearean monologue, and “rebuilding” is never more nuanced or humane than when you can feel dusty back from Mila and the other beats in FEMA Park, afraid that every step he took would take him that much further away from going back.
But Callie-Rose can’t help but push against that idea, only to raise a child—if we can call it that—is its own form of reconstruction. And while Dusty isn’t the type to admit this out loud, watching his daughter make new friends and lose precious things of her own inevitably has a profound effect on him.
In fact, life is nothing but a constant series of endings and beginnings; Change is the only constant, cliche as it may sound, and while “rebuilding” stops well short of asking its characters to be grateful for their misfortune, a lasting sense of hope comes from the opportunity they are given to imagine what home can be mean.
How do you build something that lasts in a world where climate change can, has and will continue to wipe centuries of history right off the map? When the threat of another tragic wildfire isn’t about “if,” but “when?” “It’s funny,” someone says, “the things you pack and the things you leave behind.” This quietly affecting little film finds real poignancy in calling attention to what these things are, and ultimately – forging them together so that someone else may have the gift of mourning these ruins one day.
Grade: B+
“Rebuilding” premiered in 2025 Sundance Film festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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