‘Rebuilding’ Review: Josh O’Connor Is a Rancher Who’s Lost Everything in a Drama That Mostly Just Sits There
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Rebuilding” belongs to a genre that’s now past its sell-by date: the slow-moving Sundance red-state movie.
By red state, I don’t mean that the politics are right wing in any overt way. I mean that the drama is mired in the fetishistic trappings of the American West — the horses and farm houses, the sunbaked wilderness, the small-town banks and bare-bones convenience stores, the men walking around in Stetsons and cowboy boots, the dialogue that’s so laconic you could drive a pickup truck between the lines.
At a place like Sundance, this sort of movie has always exerted a hip countercultural appeal — a feeling of “Look, even a festival as progressive as ours can dig these neo-traditionalist signifiers!” Today, when the premiere of “Rebuilding” ended, the applause was long and deep.
I’m sorry, though, I found it to be a semi-dud, the sort of movie that’s way too self-consciously austere, and then tries to take all that paced-like-Antonioni-on-a-saddle dryness and drown it in sentimentality.
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