You’re Not Ready To See Josh O’Connor Play a Sad Dad

When the Sundance lineup was announced at the end of 2024, one of the most startling images was of Mr. La Chimera and Patrick Zweig Double Threat himself: Josh O’Connor. We’ve seen Josh O’Connor do period pieces (Emma, La Chimera), we’ve seen him out on the farm (God’s Own Country), and we’ve seen him smacking a tennis ball back and forth against his frenemy, Art Donaldson (Mike Faist). And Sundance still showed us a Josh O’Connor we’ve never seen before. In Max Walker-Silverman’s Rebuilding, Josh O’Connor is not only wearing a cowboy hat but he’s also standing next to a child.

Could it be? Is it already time? It happens to all the great hunks: Paul Mescal in Aftersun, Harris Dickinson in Scrapper, Charles Melton in May December (okay … maybe that one’s a little different). Josh O’Connor has entered his Sad Dad Era.

In Rebuilding, O’Connor plays Dusty, a Colorado rancher who lost his longtime family property in a wildfire. It’d be one thing for him to lose his home, but the unfortunately prescient disaster strikes after what we can only imagine were a stressful few years in his life. He shares a daughter, the grade-school-aged Callie Rose (Lily LaTorre), with Ruby (Meghann Fahy) — his ex, who lives in the suburbs with her doting mom and new boyfriend. After the fire, the government relocates him and other unhoused victims to a leaky trailer on a barren spot of land. He’s got no home, no close family, no Wi-Fi for when Callie Rose comes by his new-to-him trailer with hopes of doing her homework on her iPad. O’Connor wears Dusty’s despondency like a heavy blanket, shoulders slumped and eyes cast toward the dirt beneath his feet.

The heaviness of Walker-Silverman’s film would be too much to bear were it not the scenes between O’Connor and LaTorre, who share an innate and easy chemistry. With Callie Rose, Dusty sheds a bit of his grief — there’s a bright, funny guy beneath all that’s happened to him over the past few months. They’re nothing without the other, adrift in the desert.

Admittedly, seeing O’Connor play a sad dad is not easy. He wears his newfound fatherhood well, neither too awkward nor youthful to be a believable young father. Dusty, in fact, carries himself like a young father might, one who may not have considered all that a future could hold when he set out to start a family. O’Connor sells it with an earnest maturity; he sells it better than he might a big cowboy hat (though points for trying). He drifted toward fatherhood near the end of La Chimera as his character Arthur develops a friendly relationship with his friend-or-maybe-more Italia’s children, but even there he’s allowed a freedom from children when he’s away from them. When Callie Rose isn’t onscreen, it’s always clear that Dusty’s thinking about her, making his trailer nice and hospitable so she wants to keep coming back.

Dusty wanders. Dusty mopes. Dusty clearly misses his ex, but her new partner is so normal that he can’t even be mad about it. We’ve seen O’Connor take on this register before, both in La Chimera and in his breakout Sundance film God’s Own Country, where he drifts sadly, across the countryside. The burden of fictional parenthood, however, keeps O’Connor from wandering off too far into an expanse of wistful, handsome despair — he has a responsibility not only to parent but to remain optimistic. In many ways, it’s one of O’Connor’s most upbeat roles yet.

For most of the runtime, Walker-Silverman’s film is almost so conflict-averse as to be unseasonably gentle, but eventually, Dusty finally folds under the burden of his grief. The rains come, and so does the flood of emotion. Dusty, please don’t suffer! You’re a really good dad, and I’m not just saying that because Josh O’Connor has been in other movies I’ve liked. If anything, though, Dusty could stand to be a little bit more, well, dusty. Everyone knows O’Connor’s better when he’s filthy, even as a dad.