So forcefully sweet you’ll have to rebuild your body’s tolerance for sugar.
A story about a man starting again and finding community in the places he’d least expect. To say the plot, themes and twee stylings of Max Walker-Silverman’s sophomore feature Rebuilding have been seen before would be like asking if wood and lumber had ever been used to build a house. Premiering at the 2025 Sundance film festival to what has been a mostly positive consensus perhaps it is the authenticity of southern Colorado working class life that endears critics but if you’re not on board this is a real eye roller.
We follow Dusty (Josh O’Connor) forcibly moving into a FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) camp after his ranch has been destroyed by a wildfire. He’s a stoic and emotionally repressed man, not willing or able to truly grieve after losing the only home or way of life he knew. His young daughter Callie Rose (Lily LaTorre) is a shining light and he seems to have a pretty amicable relationship with his ex partner Ruby (Meghann Fahy) and her mother Bess (Amy Madigan). Living in a mobile home and with the help of his fellow displaced community he must learn how to move on and forge a new life from the ashes of his past. The only problem being the film has zero panache, proper character development or anything new to say. It is rushed on a story level and painstakingly dull in search of a tone that evokes its beautiful landscapes. The consistent cloying score by Jake Xerxes Fussell & James Elkington never allows the audience to make up their own minds and gives it all the ruminative bite of a wet blanket.
The desert setting of the land inhabited by the mobile homes is rendered blissful despite these people all experiencing some sort of tragedy. It is in Walker-Silverman’s insistence on “making the most of whatcha got” or finding the pockets of hope in the despair that douse the potentially interesting idea around physical and emotional memories being lost to the flames. The film constantly reminds you of others that have done it better and with more of a mind to connect to its audience with equal parts dark and sentimental. Think of Minari, The Florida Project or Manchester by the Sea, all films with similar themes and central characters with a vastly higher emotional and complex thematic range.
Josh O’Connor, usually so reliable, is given a hapless one dimensional character to work with. How many times have we had to watch a buttoned up, straight laced everyday guy with a heart of gold slowly learn to open up? O’Connor honestly seems kind of bored and it’s only exaggerated in the one scene he must “act angry” where he throws a draw to the floor and puts his hands on his head in frustration like a cartoon. We are given no time to get to know much about the campmates apart from Mila (Kali Reis) whom he builds an unconvincing friendship with. Amy Madigan’s Bess is the icing on the cake, the classic funny grandma, who grows weed, can’t cook and attempts to provide comic relief in the tiny amount we see of her despite the apparent belovedness of her character. So many loose threads, so little courage of conviction.
In Rebuilding’s depiction of the simple life there aren’t even any interesting intricacies to learn. There is one new bit of information about rural Southern livin’ when the campmates are roasting peppers in a rolling cage over an open fire that actually feels new. These moments are ignored in place of simplistic shots of people laughing over a fire or drinking a beer as the sun sets. Idyllic sure, but not particularly eye opening. Ruminations on what was lost are spoken around the dinner table but everything feels so scripted, characters wait to let each other speak and the dialogue is so unnatural, completely erasing the attempt at building the landscape. Narratively speaking the film relies on heavily signposted problems and resolutions and despite retaining a perhaps naive sense of hope none of it rings true.
VERDICT: 3.5 / 10
Rebuilding is a slight, horrendously overwrought crowd pleaser carelessly building on the foundations of the success of the superior Nomadland. Nomadbland.
