'Reconstruction' review: Josh O'Connor plays a cowboy whose ranch burns down

Life has a way of taking away things we think we can't do without. Often that 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 laconic protagonist of “Rebuilding,” he has already lost a lot. Your marriage is over. His parents have been dead and buried for quite some time. But as this modest drama begins, Dusty faces the most devastating blow: his beloved 200-acre family ranch in Colorado burned in a devastating wildfire. He survived but could very well be a ghost.

Dusty is played by Josh O'Connor, who has cornered the market on sensitive and passive people lately. With his wiry frame and shy eyes, the British actor has demonstrated in films such as “La Chimera” and “The Mastermind” an appetite for soft-spoken characters who exude a gentle masculinity. We don't know if Dusty's voice is noticeably lowered due to his recent tragedy, but as he tries to pick up the pieces, this lonely cowboy wanders through his days, doing his best to pretend he's okay.

The second feature film from writer-director Max Walker-Silverman shares with the first a sympathy for strong, silent types. Their tough 2022 debut, “A Love Song,” was drenched in melancholy and featured Dale Dickey and Wes Studi as old childhood friends reunited, a tentative romance that flickered ever so slightly. Similarly, “Rebuilding” is a story of pain and hypotheticals populated by everyday people speaking in concise tones. The film radiates the spare, rough poetry of a John Prine story or song. (Fittingly, the musician appears on the soundtrack.)

O'Connor keeps Dusty's inner life a mystery as he reluctantly moves into a ramshackle trailer at a temporary FEMA camp, struggling to make it hospitable to his elementary school daughter, Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre), who lives primarily with Dusty's ex-wife, Ruby (Meghann Fahy), and Ruby's boyfriend, Robbie (Sam Engbring). Dusty is neither a bad father nor a sarcastic ex-spouse: he pleases everyone in his orbit, including Ruby's ailing mother, Bess (Amy Madigan). But when Callie-Rose informs Dusty that Ruby said she performed poorly in school, we believe her. “Rebuilding” doesn't reveal much about Dusty before the ranch was burned, but what ultimately becomes clear is that he's always been something of a disappointment.

It's a performance that requires O'Connor to hint at an ineffable emptiness. The character operates at a distance even from those closest to him: he has a kind spirit, but cannot fully connect. Dusty and Ruby were teenage sweethearts, but audiences don't need to know the whole story to guess why they broke up. He is the type of person overwhelmed by internal inertia, asleep on his feet, stuck in a routine. At least he had his ranch. But after the wildfire, Dusty's ubiquitous cowboy hat is all that remains of the only life he's ever known.

In keeping with Walker-Silverman's naturalistic approach, “Rebuilding” eschews a conventional plot and instead observes Dusty's negotiation of an outside world he has tried to avoid. Cautiously, he makes friends at the FEMA camp, most memorably with Mila, portrayed with gruff authenticity by Kali Reis. This de facto support group has no big inspirational speeches to offer Dusty, just a weary resilience to keep going because, really, what else can they do? Some of the film's best moments involve O'Connor ceding the spotlight to her co-stars, each of them so genuinely that one might assume Walker-Silverman rounded up real wildfire survivors.

The film's verisimilitude may cause some Los Angeles viewers to know all too well the pain of recovering from a natural disaster. When “Rebuilding” premiered at Sundance in January, Southern California festival-goers couldn't help but feel a queasy déjà vu: The Eaton and Palisades fires were still raging, destroying communities and displacing many people. That horror and sadness weighed on those initial projections, and no doubt, for many in our city, 10 months will hardly be enough time to get into the right headspace to appreciate Dusty's processing of his disorienting new normal.

But while Walker-Silverman couldn't have imagined his film's jarring parallels to the real world, “Rebuilding” is as much a character study as it is a cautionary tale about our increasingly fragile planet and the beloved places we call home. The story's studied minor tone can sometimes seem polite, but “Rebuilding” has its own delicate grace, especially once Dusty suffers other losses, some personal, others more existential. Walker-Silverman introduces a little twist near the end that seems a little too narratively convenient, but one can hardly begrudge her seeking a glimmer of hope for those whose sense of place has been destroyed. As Dusty learns, when you've lost almost everything, all you have is what's left behind.