Editor’s Note: Vanyaland Film Editor Nick Johnston is back from Park City, Utah, where he covered the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, but the fun isn’t over just yet. Keep it locked to our full coverage of Sundance reviews from this year’s festival as they go live, and check out our full archives of past editions.
There were few movies better suited to soothe the primarily Los Angeles-based Sundance audience than Max Walker-Silverman’s Rebuilding, whose subject matter is tragically relevant to the circumstances that the residents of Altadena and the rest of the Pacific Palisades currently find themselves in. One of the main reasons this year’s festival had such a strange vibe was the fire that swept through the region that so many attendees call home, as it’s hard to care much about day-to-day work in entertainment when your co-workers have lost their homes or, God forbid, you lost your own. A certain amount of glibness goes along with saying a truism like “Well, at least you made it out safely” – it neglects our sentimental attachments to places, the history they preserve, and its loss for future generations, if one is lucky enough to have a generational home like Dusty (Josh O’Connor) once did with his family farm in the mountains of Colorado.
Dusty’s a true cowboy, a man who made his living rustling cattle in the shadow of the big blue barn his grandpa erected decades ago, stoic to the point of numbness. It was his life and purpose at the expense of all other things, as his ex-wife (Meghann Fahy) and young daughter Callie Rose (Lily LaTorre) could tell you. He was absent and estranged but happy, an only child continuing his family’s work and furthering their dreams long after his parents passed on. Then the fire came tearing through the landscape, charring the trees, ruining the soil, and destroying a century’s hard work in just a few terrible moments. He’s been rudely awakened from the American dream, though he’s luckier than most: his herd survived (though he has to auction them for less than they’re worth to make ends meet), and he still owns the land, as useless at it might be for the next decade. His pals don’t have work, he has nowhere to stay, the banks won’t give him any loans because of the burnt soil, and his only option might be to head to Montana and rustle for his cousin, entirely abandoning what close family he has left for the money to start over.
He isn’t the type to take handouts, resenting the idea that he should take one of the FEMA trailers meant for the now-unhoused in the area, but he has nowhere else to go. They’re not anyone’s idea of luxury – the water system barely even works, his roof leaks terribly, and the creature comforts of modern life, like an internet connection and good cell service, aren’t available that far out in the mountain range. Yet, it has one thing that he’s missed his entire life: The community of people that surround him. There’s a family with young children that are just right around Callie Rose’s age, two different older couples who had the peace of their final years utterly eradicated, a plumber who’s miffed that his dogs can’t stay with him in the government housing, and even a hermit type that vanishes into the night from time to time. They’re all decent folk, too vulnerable to be bitter, who desperately need each other to survive.
Coupled with Callie Rose’s increasing presence in his life – his ex-mother-in-law (Amy Madigan), who he’s still close to, is nearing the end, and his ex-wife would prefer it if she were out and about instead of ignored at home – he slowly begins to open up and change. If only temporary communities like this could last forever before the county comes down and the assistance drives up, he might just have a real place to live, friends he could count on, and family who loves him – a bountiful crop of nourishment for their damaged souls better than any plant he could cultivate or steer he could rustle. In short, he’d have a home. And he don’t want to lose another one.
O’Connor’s about a million miles away from his character in Challengers, the smooth-talking wit and guile absent. Dusty’s not a talker, he’s a doer who’d rather express himself through action. His silence conceals a deep pain, as without his “purpose,” he’s forced to confront the fact that he’s chosen to isolate himself from everyone who cares about him. As you might have guessed, the title is metaphorical as well as literal – the emotional core of the film is supplied by his relationship with Callie Rose and the winding road they take to being father and daughter like they used to be back in the good ol’ days before his parents passed, rather than the distant relations they are at Rebuilding’s start.
But it’s the soul-expanding nature of being a part of a community that truly inspires his change of heart – it’s the family he thought he’d never have again, and O’Connor takes great care to reveal this to us as subtly as possible. It’s a fantastic performance, full of richness and depth, all while keeping things understated so the audience can feel every second of it. He’s assisted by a fantastic supporting cast, especially LaTorre, one of the rare child actors who can play disaffected without coming across as bratty. She’s got understandable reasons to be pissed at him, and she expertly portrays the kind of guarded way a child like her would start to re-engage with an absent parent.
Walker-Silverman’s caring yet observational portrayal of these events helps to guard Rebuilding from accusations of cheap sentimentality, not that it’s a particularly bad quality to possess, especially at a moment like this. There’s a kind of jaundice that emerges in audiences when they feel they’re being force-fed treacle or bitter medicine – one only needs to look at the various festival films each year that get accused of “poverty porn” to see what makes them objectionable to some audiences. Yet there’s a genuine sensitivity to the portrayal of post-catastrophe life that never makes it feel manipulative, thanks to the smart way in which Dusty and those around him grow throughout the film. Its ending – a bona fide happy resolution – is so well-earned and out-of-style for this type of film that it almost feels like one dreamed it up. Even better, it’s a suggestion of what could be possible if one should choose the closeness he’s found in a community rather than his self-interest.
As far as prescriptive, instructive endings go, it’s hard to find one more out-of-step with the moment yet in line with the kind of enduring kindness that makes a film resonant throughout the years. I abhor the idea of “the movie we need now” as a writing cliché, but it’s true that, for a decent chunk of festivalgoers, this was the right film at the right time for them, and, happily, I think we’ll find that it has a long-lasting shelf life for all audiences.