Rebuilding

It has the feel of a traditional Western with the vast vistas of Colorado to the fore, but underneath it emerges as an intimately humanist story about a divorced father Dusty (Josh O’Connor in quietly reflective mode as a man of few words), whose ranch has burned down in a devastating wild fire.

Reserved and at a loss as to working out how his future may unfold, he takes refuge in a trailer community on an out-of-town campsite with neighbours who similarly are trying to rebuild their lives. He reaches out to his ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy) and his young daughter Callie-Rose (who is wise beyond her nine years) and the threads of these relationships start to come together again.

It could not be more apposite in exploring how whose who have lost everything in such environmental disasters, find resilience in human connections. The cast who all contribute heart-felt performances also include Kali Reis (from True Detective) and Amy Madigan as his ex-mother-in-law but it is O’Connor who stands out as the subdued figure who is a tower of strength to those around him.

It is a highly personal narrative for Max Walker-Silverman (who previously made A Love Song). A few years ago he had just moved home to Colorado after finishing film school. His worldly possessions were all in a pickup truck, and he stayed between his mother’s place on one side of town and his father’s abode on the other. At the time fires kept breaking out across the west, and all summer long the air was thick with smoke. His own grandmother only just managed to escape the conflagrations.

All these interactions clearly helped to inform the script whose characters unusually and refreshingly are all decent human beings trying to reinvent lives literally from the ashes. The scene where Dusty teaches his daughter the art of saddling up a horse speaks volumes about the re-establishing of their relationship while the stick-on stars they apply to the plain walls of the trailer lend a magical element to the day to day rigours.

Visually the film is striking, lensed by cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo, with arresting scenes of embers across a night sky - a horrible beauty which turns to scorched earth and charred trees. The acoustic score by Jake Xerxes Fussell and James Elkington is mixed with strains of country music to suitably atmospheric effect.

Walker-Silverman leaves the viewer with a sense of optimism that despite the traumas and tribulations these characters will survive.

Reviewed on: 10 Jul 2025