‘Rebuilding’ review: Josh O’Connor plays a cowboy whose ranch burns down

Life has a way of taking away things from us that we think we can't do without. Often this means the death of a loved one, but sometimes it can be home, and with it our grounding in the world. When we meet Dusty, the taciturn protagonist of Perestroika, he has already lost a lot. His marriage fell apart. His parents died and were buried long ago. But as this low-key drama begins, Dusty suffers his most devastating blow yet: his beloved family's 200-acre ranch in Colorado is burned in a devastating wildfire. He survived, but he might as well have been a ghost.

Dusty is played by Josh O'Connor, who has lately cornered the market on sensitive and passive outsiders. The British actor, with his wiry physique and shy eyes, has showcased himself in films such as “La Chimera” And “Mastermind” an appetite for quiet characters who exude gentle masculinity. We don't know if Dusty's voice has become noticeably muted due to his recent tragedy, but as he tries to pick up the pieces, this lonely cowboy floats through his days, trying his best to pretend he's holding up normally.

Writer-director Max Walker-Silverman's second feature, like his first, shares a fondness for strong, silent types. His brilliant debut in 2022 “Love Song” was drenched in melancholy, starring Dale Dickey and Wes Studi as reunited aging childhood friends, and a faint, tentative romance blossomed. Likewise, “Recovery” is a story of heartbreak and what-ifs written by ordinary people speaking in terse tones. The film exudes the spare, stark poetry of a short story or short story. John Prine song. (By the way, the musician appears on the soundtrack.)

O'Connor keeps Dusty's inner life a secret as he reluctantly moves into a shabby trailer at a temporary FEMA camp while struggling to make it hospitable to his high school daughter Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre), who mostly lives with Dusty's ex-wife Ruby (Megan Fahey) and Ruby's boyfriend, Robbie (Sam Engbring). Dusty is not a bad father or a sarcastic ex-husband – everyone in his circle likes him, including his sick mother Ruby Bess (Amy Madigan). But when Callie-Rose tells Dusty that Ruby said he wasn't doing well in school, we believe her. “Restoration” doesn't tell us much about Dusty before the ranch burned down, but over time it becomes clear that he has always been a disappointment.

This is a performance that requires O'Connor to suggest an ineffable emptiness. The character acts at a distance even from those closest to him – he has a good spirit, but he cannot fully find a common language. Dusty and Ruby were teenagers in love, but viewers don't need to know the whole backstory to guess why they broke up. He's one of those guys weighed down by internal inertia, sleeping on his feet, stuck in a rut. At least he had a ranch. But after a forest fire, Dusty's ever-present cowboy hat is all that remains of the only life he's ever known.

In keeping with Walker-Silverman's naturalistic approach, “Restoration” eschews a traditional plot, instead following Dusty's negotiations with the outside world he was trying to escape. He carefully makes friends at the FEMA camp, the most memorable of whom is Mila, portrayed with gruff authenticity by Kali Reis. This de facto cheerleader has no big inspirational speeches to offer Dusty, only a weary resilience to keep going because, really, what else can they do? In some of the film's best moments, O'Connor cedes the spotlight to his co-stars, each of whom is so unapologetically sincere that one might assume Walker-Silverman had assembled real-life bushfire survivors.

The film's verisimilitude may disconcert some Los Angeles viewers who know all too well the pain of disaster recovery. When “Restoration” premiered at Sundance in January, festival-goers in Southern California couldn't help but feel a sickening sense of déjà vu: The Eaton and Palisades fires were still raging, destroying communities and displacing many people. That horror and sadness loomed over early screenings, and no doubt for many in our city, 10 months is unlikely to be enough time to enter into a proper headspace and evaluate how Dusty perceives his disorienting new normal.

But while Walker-Silverman never imagined his film would have stark real-world parallels, Restoration is as much a character study as it is a warning about our increasingly fragile planet and the beloved places we call home. The story's studied minor-key tone can feel campy at times, but “Restoration” has its own subtle grace, especially as Dusty suffers other losses—some personal, others more existential. Walker-Silverman throws in a little twist near the end that feels a little too convenient from a narrative perspective, but one can hardly begrudge him his search for a sliver of hope for those whose sense of place has been erased. As Dusty learns, when you've lost almost everything, all you have is what's left behind.