'Rebuilding' a nuanced drama starring Josh O'Connor

The villain of "Rebuilding" is never shown, and that's for the better.

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Embers swirl in the film's opening titles amid the roar of a conflagration. When the first images appear—a smoky stand of scorched pines, their silhouettes black against the haze—you're glad the violence and destruction stayed off-screen.

Natural disasters in TV and film are sadly familiar. But what does it look like after the news cameras move on? Wildfires in Colorado and elsewhere may darken our skies, but a figurative cloaking can also occur within survivors’ minds, as we see in “Rebuilding,” which embraces the subject with uncommon heart. Written by and directed by Telluride-area native Max Walker-Silverman, “Rebuilding” is an elegant and spiritual look at the choices faced by survivors, who are already juggling as many economic and personal crises as anyone else. Walker-Silverman and cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo step back just enough to see our characters as others might: battered and uncertain, resolute and earnest. But in sympathetic fits, they also jump into their characters’ heads to regard the world as the characters do.