Most Oscar films I can see coming a mile away. They come pre-hyped, and draw my eyeballs early and often. And yet, there’s always one or two that slip past my radar. If I’m unlucky, they just come and go. But if I’m not? Congratulations to Rebuilding, the Exhibiting Forgiveness of 2025; you captured my heart, and will stay with me long after Oscar season ends unlike some of your hyped competitors.
Poor Dusty (not poor Josh O’Connor, one of his many great performances this year). He’s just seen a wilfire destory his Colorado ranch that’s been in his family for generations. Temporarily, FEMA has given Dusty a trailer along with a few fellow homeless survivors. And so he goes about trying to start again, with a little assist from his ex Ruby (Meghann Fahy), excited that someone can now take care of their daughter Callie Rose (Lily LaTorre) after school while she works.
20 minutes in, writer/director Max Walker-Silverman has completely overwhelmed my senses. I wasn’t an audience member anymore. I was another person in the FEMA trailer park, or out observing the mountains, or in the library’s parking lot to get the only WiFi in the neighborhood. Walker-Silverman juxtaposes the high and the low to incredible effects. After witnessing Colorado’s majestic vistas, it’s time to go to sleep in this hyper claustrophobic, empty temporary home. Then we’re back out riding horseback with Callie Rose. Oh wait, now it’s time for iPad studying in the parking lot. Up. Down. Up. Down. Instead of being jarring, the director’s deliberate touch gathers in every place, big and small, and wraps them into this American tale for the ages, finding a harmony none of the characters, or the audience, thought would be possible at the beginning of Rebuilding.
That’s because Max the writer knows what we all should: home is not a place, it is a people. Things only matter if we give them meaning. At first, that FEMA trailer means sadness to Dusty; he doesn’t want to be there, instead dreaming of his Big Sky Montana cousin and the ranching possibilities further Northwest. Out of obligation he starts taking care of Callie Rose, as a way to pass the time in between fulfilling his real purpose of being a rancher. But as the days and weeks go by, those ranching dreams disappear. Sometimes in really despondent ways, but moreso, in beautiful, life-altering ones. That empty FEMA trailer has now become filled with not just glow in the dark stars and 5th grade art work, but a place of wonderful memories between a father and daughter. Until the fire, happiness for Dusty was at that ranch of his; now they’ve spread to Callie Rose, Ruby, Ruby’s mom Bess (Amy Madigan, playing the opposite of Aunt Gladys), and all the people in the trailer park. His heart finally believes his words when he said, I’m not broke I got stuff.
Rebuilding certainly will do that to the cynics. If not for the wonderfully sweet story at its center, but also for another example of how to modernize the Western. I really love every new wrinkle filmmakers have taken to keep the genre alive, in sometimes exciting, sometimes darkly funny, sometimes epic ways. Here’s hoping this well of ideas continues to expand and grow!