ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
Wildfires have remade the West in the past few years - the people, the communities, the whole landscape. Now a film named "Rebuilding" shows what is left behind after the fire is out and the firefighters leave. In dry, mountainous western Colorado, a cowboy named Dusty tries to cope with losing his ranch.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "REBUILDING")
JOSH O'CONNOR: (As Dusty) This is the big blue barn here. I'm going to build it back much bigger next time.
LILY LATORRE: (As Callie-Rose) Are the trees dead?
O'CONNOR: (As Dusty) You just got to wait and see which go green again and which don't.
SCHMITZ: "Rebuilding" debuted at Sundance earlier this year and is now in theaters. It's writer and director, Max Walker-Silverman, joins me now. Good morning, Max.
MAX WALKER-SILVERMAN: Good morning.
SCHMITZ: So, Max, your film opens with a shot of wisping smoke. We've got orange embers that are flying through the air, barren trees, scorched landscape. A wildfire has been here, but we don't see it. Tell us about this opening shot.
WALKER-SILVERMAN: This is a story about a wildfire only in the most basic sense. What I mean by that is that it's a story about all the things that happen afterwards to recover and reimagine and move on. And the film tells a story of a group of people who all wind up thrown together in a FEMA camp sharing very little but that they've all lost everything.
SCHMITZ: And this is where we meet Dusty. He's a cowboy. He's a rancher. He's an individual who's in control of his own world, and we start to see him throughout the film gradually lose that control.
WALKER-SILVERMAN: Well, I think there's a part of this story that's about the individual becoming part of a community. You know, I guess, growing up in Colorado and anywhere in the rural West, there's kind of a celebration of the tough individual who can figure it out alone. And it's a myth, you know, of course, and it's a sorry myth because it leads people to solitude and isolation. And we're at our best when we do things together. And along with, like, the tragedy of disasters is this fascinating thing that comes in their wake every time without fail, which is people caring for those they didn't know beforehand. And it never lasts as long as I wish it did, but it's something we wanted to pay tribute to in this film.
SCHMITZ: So, Max, as your film develops, it becomes clear that Dusty is not only fighting against the fire, but we've got, you know, human institutions, like relief agencies such as FEMA and banks, that are also creating conflict for him.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "REBUILDING")
JEFFERSON MAYS: (As Mr. Cassidy) This was a high-severity burn. It means the land is - you won't have a hay crop for eight years, maybe 10. But as far as the bank goes, there's just no way that we can step in.
SCHMITZ: And, Max, I feel like we're watching Dusty - a guy who's used to doing everything for himself - start to come into contact with the state and its institutions that are set up to help people, but he's sort of clumsily navigating all of this.
WALKER-SILVERMAN: Well, the systems are, themselves, clumsy, I guess. And it's just a fact that the systems that are in place to help people out in the worst of times are insufficient - kind of breaks my heart to see how easily the world can leave people behind.
SCHMITZ: So Dusty finds a temporary shelter in a government trailer provided by FEMA, and then that's promptly withdrawn. You know, he feels different from the other people who are set up in these FEMA trailers, but they're all sort of, in some ways, climate refugees. And it seems like climate change is the prime sort of mover of this story. It's almost a character, but it's a character that is never mentioned.
WALKER-SILVERMAN: In setting out on this project, I was thinking about how climate change in art really was always this thing on the horizon, you know? And it's no longer somewhere up the road. It's amongst us and all around us. And while there's a tragedy to that, I found strange, melancholy hope in it as well, because life continues to have its beautiful moments, and the sunsets remain gorgeous, and I can still take a walk and enjoy the fresh air. And I don't know - that paradox became kind of central to the thing of, like, can you hope for the future, that it can be beautiful and rich and lovely in our lives? You have to hope for that. You have to believe in that because without that hope, there's just nothing to fight for.
SCHMITZ: I read that the heart of this story came from a very personal place. Your grandmother's home caught on fire.
WALKER-SILVERMAN: Yeah. In 2020, in a really serious fire year all across the West, my grandmother's house in California burned down. I was scared to go back to that place for a long time. It was, like, this kind of green, magical land of my childhood and, like, one of the most precious places to me growing up. And when I did, you know, there was kind of the blackened expanse and all of its terror and drama. But there were also green saplings and purple flowers kind of as far as the eye can see. I was watching my mom begin to care for that land again and bring it back in some way. So the writing of the script kind of traced watching the world end and then come back somehow.
SCHMITZ: Now, the idea of home is also a major theme in "Rebuilding." It was also a theme that you were exploring the last time that we spoke to you for NPR's student film showcase in 2021. You're not making student films anymore, but how has your thinking evolved since that?
WALKER-SILVERMAN: I don't know. I mean, it's this constant thing that we wrestle with, that I wrestle with. And the sort of funky, hippie town that I grew up in is now gone, and that hippie town came out of a mining town, and that mining town came out of you - summer hunting lands. And all of which to say is, I guess, I think there's this, like, constant search in my work for, like, what can home mean in this changing world? And maybe it's the people around us. You know, it's the people we care about, and it's the memories we have, and it's the hopes we have. And somewhere between caring about the past of a place and hoping for the future of it, there is this little sliver of present that has to be home.
SCHMITZ: That's Max Walker-Silverman. He directed the new film "Rebuilding." It's in theaters now. Thanks, Max.
WALKER-SILVERMAN: Thank you, guys. Really appreciate it. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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