Torun (Poland) (AFP) – The Western “Rust” got its world premiere on Wednesday at a Polish film festival, three years after its cinematographer was killed in an on-set shooting. Hollywood star Alec Baldwin was accused of violating gun safety rules in the 2021 death of Halyna Hutchins, but his involuntary manslaughter trial collapsed earlier this year. Hutchins’s mother refused to attend the premiere “when there is still no justice for my daughter.” “Baldwin continues to increase my pain with his refusal to apologise to me and take responsibility for her death,” Olga Solovey said Tuesday.
Director Joel Souza, who was wounded in the shooting, introduced the movie at the Camerimage film festival — known for celebrating cinematography — in Torun, northern Poland. He told AFP the “massive devastation” of the shooting had left him an emotional wreck. “‘Rust’ just became this sort of insane hurricane,” he said. “You’re just left to sort of pick up the pieces.” The filmmaker had been “on the fence” about completing the movie. “There was a time when I thought I just didn’t want to make movies anymore,” he said. But what convinced him to finish it was learning that Hutchins’s husband wanted her final work to be seen. Camerimage said it was Hutchins’s “dream” to have her work shown at the festival. The premiere was preceded by a minute of silence for Hutchins, whom Souza described as “a real joy to know” and “someone who spoke Westerns very well”.
Baldwin, 66, did not attend the festival. The Emmy-winning actor was holding a revolver during a rehearsal on set in New Mexico when a live round was fired, fatally wounding 42-year-old Hutchins. In a tragic irony, the film centres on an accidental killing — a parallel that Souza called “unsettling.” “It’s a strange one to unpack. When people hear about it, they generally fall silent for a few moments because they can’t believe” it, he said. Souza and Baldwin developed the script from Souza’s research on the youngest person ever to be hanged in the Old West. “Rust” tells the story of an outlaw who rides to rescue his 13-year-old grandson from execution for an accident being treated as murder. The film’s armourer, Hannah Gutierrez, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter for accidentally loading Baldwin’s prop gun with a live round. Baldwin’s trial collapsed in July when it emerged that prosecutors had not turned over a batch of bullets that detectives had found during their investigation. Filming was completed last year in Montana.
Cinematographer Bianca Cline, who took over from Hutchins, said her job involved just “copying what she did,” including by using the same lenses and matching the lighting. She said they tried to retain as many of Hutchins’s frames as possible. Visually dark, the movie frequently shows characters in silhouette or with their faces partly in shadow. The shaky camera gives the Western a rough feel. In addition to violence of all kinds — gunfights, beatings, brawls in the mud — another motif is the grandson’s longing for his late mother. When his younger brother asks what she looked like, he says: “I can’t remember.”
Film school student Michal Wozny, who attended the screening, said he thought of Hutchins and her now motherless son during those scenes. “Not only do you watch a movie and feel for the characters, but you’re also aware of what happened in real life and all the feelings there,” the 24-year-old told AFP. He called the movie “beautiful and authentic.” Hutchins, a former journalist from Ukraine who grew up on a Soviet military base, had been named one of the industry’s rising stars in 2019 by American Cinematographer magazine. While the tragedy prompted some calls for banning firearms from sets altogether, new Hollywood guidelines now specify that only an armourer can hand a weapon to an actor. Prosecutors said Baldwin was handed the gun on set by the film’s first assistant director, who later pleaded guilty to negligent use of a deadly weapon. Souza said “the safety bulletin doesn’t go quite far enough. I think they should mandate that no real weapons be used.”
The “Rust” premiere is not the only controversy at the festival, whose jury head this year is Oscar winner Cate Blanchett. French director Coralie Fargeat pulled her movie starring Demi Moore, “The Substance” — which won best screenplay at Cannes — “after discovering the highly misogynistic and offensive words” of festival founder Marek Zydowicz. Zydowicz appeared to suggest that including more women cinematographers might lead to “mediocre film production” in the line-up. He later apologised.
© 2024 AFP
