British star Josh O’Connor dons a cowboy hat and heads to Colorado in Max Walker-Silverman’s tender drama “Rebuilding,” alongside Meghann Fahy (“The White Lotus”), Kali Reis (“True Detective: Night Country”) and Lily LaTorre.
“I really love that man,” Walker-Silverman tells Variety.
“In ‘The Crown’ or ‘La Chimera,’ he was struggling for a way out of this very formal masculinity. Prince Charles’ masculinity is different from Colorado rancher’s masculinity, but the challenge is actually very similar.”
O’Connor plays Dusty, whose ranch has burned down in a wildfire. He doesn’t know how to go on or how to provide for his young daughter. But he’s not alone in a small community that’s literally still picking up the pieces.
“These small, ‘regional’ films can be tough. You need people who are kind and generous,” continues the director, also praising Fahy – “She can be so strong and so fragile” – and Reis.
“Kali was a bridge between professional and non-professional actors, because she comes from boxing. She knows what it’s like. We have Josh from the U.K., Lily from Australia and then a bunch of ranchers, hippies, farmers, mechanics and teachers from Colorado’s San Luis Valley. It’s a strange group, but everyone came together to make something they believed in.”
Walker-Silverman is also a Colorado native.
“It all started from the experiences in my own life. Also related to fire and disaster, and just loss. But loss often comes with so much love. It brings out a really nurturing side of humanity. It doesn’t last as long as it should, but it’s there,” he stresses.
“People care for each other and for the neighbors they didn’t even know before things went wrong. It’s just the most beautiful, mysterious and brave thing – to be gentle.”
Sold by Mk2 Films, “Rebuilding” was produced by Jesse Hope, Dan Janvey and Paul Mezey for Present Company, and co-produced by Cow Hip Films and Dead End Pictures.
Returning to Karlovy Vary Film Festival after “A Love Song,” this time to the main competition, Walker-Silverman’s aware that as fires keep on ravaging his country, his small story suddenly got a whole lot bigger.
“Climate change used to be that thing we should all stop at one point. As I was writing the film during a fire-filled summer in Colorado, it became clear we’re in it now, and this is a part of our lives,” he says.
But life still perseveres in “strange, and at times very beautiful ways.”
“When these things happened in my family, it was fascinating to see that recovery wasn’t just about reconstruction – it was also about reimagination. I wasn’t trying to make a movie about disasters, but about what happens after. So often, we see people rebuild in the exact same place where they’ve lost everything. It might be because of fires, floods, drought, war or visa denials, but our sense of home is very flexible and therefore very strong. I take hope in that.”
His own home “frustrates him and breaks his heart sometimes,” but he still loves it.
“My mom’s house is three blocks to the west and my dad’s three blocks to the east. I’m very privileged to play around with the world’s most expensive art form in the little place I grew up with my friends. Sometimes people feel like they can’t, or shouldn’t, love a place because it has imperfections. My home certainly has them – immense ones, in fact. But my understanding of love and what makes it the greatest, strangest thing in the world is that we can feel it despite the imperfections or even because of them.”
Regional cinema can be a “powerful thing,” he argues.
“If you try to tell a story about everyone, it turns to mush. But if you try to be specific, somehow it takes on meaning for people all over the place. We can feel the proximity to something true in them. I don’t try to tell stories that are universal, but when specific stories are done right, when regional stories are done with care and attention to detail, they expand to something broader,” he points out. For a guy from Colorado, it’s a long speech. Longer than anything Dusty, or his similarly tongue-tied family, would ever be caught saying.
“I’ve known and grown up with a lot of people who choose their words very carefully or struggle to find them. It does present a challenge in filmmaking – it’s hard to create witty, entertaining banter. But there’s a payoff to it, because when someone finally does say what they’ve been avoiding, it adds so much weight to it,” notes Walker-Silverman.
“Ironically, even though it’s a movie where people don’t say very much, it’s all about connection.”
“Rebuilding”