By George & Josh Bate
2025 is the year of Josh O’Connor. This year, the English actor stars in a whopping four movies, all of which have garnered critical acclaim and showcased the breadth of his acting repertoire. Debuting just days before his resounding turn in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is Rebuilding, a vehicle for O’Connor’s talent couched in a touching story of resilience and community.
From writer/director Max Walker-Silverman, Rebuilding stars O’Connnor as Dusty, a reserved, divorced father whose Colorado ranch has burned down in a devastating wildfire. Forced to live in a trailer community, Dusty finds himself getting close to his new neighbors, who have also lost everything in the fire. Meanwhile, Dusty begins to reconnect with his young daughter Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre), his ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy), and his former mother-in-law Bess (Amy Madigan).
Many films go too loud and overt in their attempts to uplift audiences, a complaint no one could lodge against Rebuilding. The second feature film from A Love Song director Max Walker-Silverman tells a beautiful and, at times, painful story about the growth that can come in the wake of destruction but does so in a manner that feels authentic and never saccharine.
Rebuilding is quiet. Never eerily so, rather in a way that invites the viewer to sit with the emotions swelling from such a difficult situation. Not a single character loudly spouts dialogue or acts enthusiastically, yet everyone is, to some degree, in a great deal of pain. O’Connor’s lead character has lost everything. He lost the ranch that’s been in his family for generations. He lost the only home he knew. He lost his income. And, before that, he lost his wife and daughter following a painful divorce. Despite the anguish he’s experienced though, O’Connor unwaveringly plays Dusty as reserved and solemn. Walker-Silverman avoids ever squandering the authenticity of his story and characters with a big, showy moment for O’Connor to more overtly exercise his acting muscles, instead tasking O’Connor with a different and likely more difficult challenge – depict immense hurt and struggle with little dialogue and very little emotional expression.
An actor of O’Connor’s caliber takes this challenge into his stride with a quietly powerful and deeply moving performance. Walker-Silverman often has the camera simply linger on O’Connor’s face for extended periods of time, during which O’Connor isn’t saying or doing anything (at least overtly). It’s in these moments that the strength of O’Connor’s performance shines the brightest as he conveys a remarkable amount of emotion and contemplation through his eyes and body language alone. Out of his four performances this year, Rebuilding includes O’Connor’s most subtle turn.
Some may mind Rebuilding’s lack of strict narrative or traditional three-act structure to be dull, but, for us, it imbues the film with authenticity that only heightens the emotions we experience. In some ways, Walker-Silverman structures his film like a slice-of-life tale, albeit one that focuses on a particularly difficult slice of life for Dusty. In doing so, it feels like we’re dropped into the life of a man at his lowest and, by the end, get to experience vicariously the heights we can still reach after being so unimaginably low.
Rebuilding intelligently doesn’t spell out its messaging, however, and unfolds somewhat unpredictably. Although the culmination of the story can be generally forecast ahead of time, it is never quite clear what point the narrative will eventually land on and, indeed, if our characters will get a happy ending. This makes the eventual ending, which falters a tad in its execution, ultimately all the more rewarding and deserved.
VERDICT: 8/10
Josh O’Connor continues to build a reputation for versatile and thought-provoking performances in Rebuilding, an uplifting movie about resilience and finding happiness in the wake of devastation. Although likely not to everyone’s taste given how quiet and meditative it is, the sophomore feature from Max Walker-Silverman excels with its authentic characters and story, making the emotions provoked hit all the more powerfully. A reserved performance from O’Connor that relies on neither dialogue nor overt mannerisms aids in how moving Rebuilding is and impresses with how much mental anguish can be conveyed without an actor’s most commonly applied tools. Faltering execution of its ending aside, Rebuilding is yet another vehicle for the ever-expanding talent of O’Connor and a film that, in our often dour times, we all desperately need.