The title of Max Walker-Silverman’s second feature film – which is also his second entry to the Sundance Film Festival after his 2022 debut A Love Song – makes conveniently clear what kind of story this is. On the surface there is the old ideal of community, of simple working-class people sticking together in the face of adversities and creating something new from little to nothing. Underneath this amiable exterior, caught by DP Alfonso Herrera Salcedo in bright, clean-cut panorama views, lies an appreciation of traditionalism, of old-time family values and the misguided believe hard work and holding onto the past could overcome any challenge.

These challenges are for Josh O’Connor’s humble hero looking after his two little daughters after the separation from his young wife Ruby (a tender Meghann Fahy) and the loss of their farm through devastating wildfires. Understandably, these themes resonate deeply with a festival audience painfully aware of the catastrophic events in California. While it seems unfair to accuse the director-writer of calculation, it’s hard not to feel cynical about the promotional push the devastation gives to an otherwise conventional story of holding on to one’s home and hope. If one looks a little closer, the conservative values ingrained into the optimistic narrative are hard to ignore.

Most prominent among these reactionary tropes is that of the cowboy as cornerstone and the the ultimately saviour o the community as embodied by O’Connor’s Dusty. Even without the cattle he has to sell in the beginning to make ends meet, his cowboy hat and lanky body language clearly identify him as remnant from the Old West. Then there are the ideals of the heteronormative core family which, though fractured, is still prominent in Dusty, Ruby and their daughters, the rural community represented by the displaced supporting characters with whom they bond. They firmly believe in maintaining one’s traditional way of life.

This last aspect transpires as the most questionable in light of both the real environmental disaster and the fictional one setting the plot in motion. There is no mentioning of the environmental impact of cattle farming. In similar fashion, the economical vulnerability created by a lack of social security and guaranteed health care goes unchallenged. Rather than facing that the character’s situation is less the result of hostile nature than of a failing social system, the confident drama employs excellent performances sentiment, and nostalgia to romanticise a fight for survival that in reality isn’t won by but based in outdated perceptions.

Rebuilding just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.