Some small, quiet, slice-of-life films can reverberate in ways large, grandiose, and virtuosic ones never do. Director-screenwriter Max Walker-Silverman has achieved that kind of luminosity with his film “Rebuilding.” The film unfolds in a striking rural mountain setting in Colorado, where a wildfire has burned and disfigured a large portion of the landscape and destroyed the ranch of the film’s central character, Dusty (Josh O’Connor). Dusty deeply loved the ranch and the land, so its loss causes his whole being to convey a feeling of melancholy and, in his sharp ex-wife’s words, to “feel like nothing.”
Dusty is divorced and without clear direction. He slouches and mumbles, and he is a man of few words played in an understated manner by O’Connor, a British actor whom I have recently seen deliver stunning and intricate performances in two other films (including Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind”). Dusty may be down after losing everything, but he has preserved his kindness and humanity.
One sees in his desire to reconnect with his very intelligent daughter Callie Rose (Lily LaTorre) how profoundly lonely he is and how much he desires some kind of connection. At first, Callie Rose is closed off to Dusty; she loves reading, and he listens to her reading stories and reads to her in turn. He begins to break through to her when they paste a set of stars that glow in the dark on the dreary walls of the FEMA trailer in which he is living. He also connects with her by teaching her to ride.
The film breaks from the archetype of the solitary, individualistic cowboy by having Dusty help form a community of sorts among the people who live in the trailers after their homes were burnt down. They share meals and memories together. The other members of the loose community are rarely people who populate classic westerns. They include a biracial elderly couple, two elderly lesbians, an amiable plumber, and a man who lives in the woods. Played by first-time actors, the characters are not given much dimension or detail, except that they are all a little too good to be true. The only person in the trailer community besides Dusty whom the film defines is a balanced, calm, strong widow, Mali (played by Kali Reis).
The film ends in a pat fashion with Dusty buying the trailers from FEMA, giving them as a gift to the other community members and offering them his burnt-out ranch to live on. But the contrived ending does not take away from the fact that the film is moving and touched with restrained eloquence and a stirring central performance.
