Wri/Dir: Max Walker-Silverman | Cast: Josh O’Connor, Lily LaTorre, Meghann Fahy, Amy Madigan | Drama 95′
Reviewed by Ian Long
Thomas “Dusty” Fraser Jr. is a mild-mannered Coloradan rancher, reeling from a devastating fire which has destroyed the farmhouse and surrounding woodlands that he inherited from his parents. Home is now one in a circle of small, joyless trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, set in a large expanse of featureless scrubland.
As the story begins, Dusty – whose marriage has also broken down – tries to reconnect with his 10-year-old daughter, Callie Rose. Pert and self-contained, Callie doesn’t need him to read her the ‘Magic Boots’ story she has on her portable computer– or, it seems, to do anything else for her. Dusty feels superfluous. Farming jobs are hard to come by, and it seems that relocating far away may be the only way forward.
Initially detached and solitary, Dusty slowly bonds with the fragile, mostly elderly community of traumatised survivors at the caravan park, particularly Mali, a woman who’s lost her husband and homestead in the fire and has spent time sleeping rough with her daughter. They’re all united by grief, mutual comfort and a fatalistic acceptance of the bad hand they’ve been dealt.
Callie Rose’s affection for Dusty gradually rekindles, suggesting that he was absent from home for some time before the fire, although I didn’t glean any details about this. He takes her to the remnants of their house, revealing his plan to restore it exactly as it was – a doomed dream of reversionto a vanished past. When he tells her that it remains to be seen “which trees grow back, and which trees don’t,” it’s hard not to feel that Dusty will be in the second category.
There’s a strong idea at the centre of this story, of a man who’s been abruptly ejected from his life and is lingering onwith no solid purpose, almost as if haunting himself; but Rebuilding doesn’t develop this in a convincing or emotionally gripping way.
The characters feel hazy, the scenario not fully thought-through, and the film falls oddly flat, failing to show us the grit and grain I’d expect from people who have been pushed so close to the edge. In fact, quite the opposite. Dusty, his ex-family and just about everyone else in the film are mostly passive, and the range of the production’s capable actors is left unexplored. Even when an order to leave their encampment within 12 days appears on the survivors’ trailer doors, it doesn’t really rile them up. Dusty throws a piece of crockery at a cardboard box. Otherwise he remains resigned, forlorn, and rather bland.
If all drama is conflict, drama is dialled right down here. Some strong reason for Dusty’s breach with his family, somemisdemeanour for which he must atone, might have added an extra layer to the story, but if it’s there, I didn’t pick it up. There isn’t even any friction between Dusty and Bobby, his wife Ruby’s new boyfriend, another underdeveloped characterwho’s mostly there to provide a plausible source for the soundtrack’s plangent guitar music.
Some plot turns feel less than authentic. When Dusty applies for a bank loan to rebuild the farm, the manager says he can’t comply because the fire has damaged the land so badly that it won’t be usable for another 8 to 10 years. But is this a reflection of real agricultural or banking practices, or a plot device to raise the story’s stakes? Forests and pastures for grazing are distinct entities: it’s not clear that damage to one would render the other unusable for so long.
Callie’s ‘Magic Boots’ story concludes with its protagonist realising that the magic is in him, not just in his boots. Dustyalso manages to rally his spirits and bring some hope to his mini-community of survivors, although viewers will have to judge for themselves how viable his solution is. Optimism is in short supply these days, but Rebuilding undercuts its positive ambitions by failing to create a story strong enough to draw out its characters and test them in meaningful ways.
IAN LONG is a writer and scriptdoctor.
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