Arts

Alec Baldwin shot dead a cinematographer of this western in an on-set accident. Its release feels even more grim because gun violence is the predominant motif

After the screen snaps to black at the end of Rust , a message appears reading: “… for Halyna.” After that, a quote is ascribed to Halyna Hutchins: “What can we do to make this better?” Then, her name fades to its spelling in her native Ukrainian. After a card bearing the name of Joel Souza, the director, the next card reads: “Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, ASC.”

These memorial codas from the American Society of Cinematographers are touching, even if Rust’s official release in America feels an acutely queasy exercise after the accidental death of Hutchins on the set of Rust in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in October 2021. Alec Baldwin, who plays the film’s protagonist, was positioning a revolver during filming when it went off, killing her and injuring Souza. Hutchins was survived by her husband, Matthew, and son Andros, then nine.

Rust is available to view on streaming services in America such as Prime Video, although physical screenings of the movie appear scattered. There are no New York City cinemas presently showing it, for example — the nearest is in the New Jersey town of Bernardsville. A UK release is said to be planned.

The film feels even more grim because guns and their use for violence are the predominant motifs in this 1880s-set western about a young orphan, Lucas (an impressive Patrick Scott McDermott), and his outlaw grandfather Harland Rust (Baldwin), being pursued by the law and various ne’er-do-wells. Harland has broken Lucas out of jail after the boy was sentenced to hang for accidentally shooting a man dead. Lucas identifies one particular gun as one that has brought nothing but misery to all who have touched it.

The scene being rehearsed when Hutchins was shot is not in the film, but no matter — often you are watching guns being aimed and discharged, with multiple people shot and dying, writhing in pain. Rust ricochets with whizzing bullets and is drenched in bloody wounds, the entirely preventable death of Hutchins rarely far from the viewer’s mind.

Away from its gunshot blasts, the most memorable aspect is also the best memorial to Hutchins’s skills — the on-screen composition of beautiful, open landscapes, captured in daytime and dusk, and at night the flickering of fire illuminating Baldwin and McDermott’s faces as they talk.

Eighteen months after Hutchins’s death, Rust resumed shooting (another cinematographer, Bianca Cline, is listed after Hutchins in the credits). “The family wanted it completed,” Souza has said. Matthew Hutchins and his son will receive profits from the film; its original producers will not.

Baldwin has consistently denied responsibility for the shooting, and a judge dismissed a charge of involuntary manslaughter against him. Baldwin has filed a lawsuit accusing prosecutors and law enforcement officials of waging a “malicious prosecution”. The film’s armourer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and jailed for 18 months. A recent reality series featuring Baldwin and his wife, Hilaria, The Baldwins, was criticised for seeking to sanitise the actor’s image.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, next month lawyers for Hutchins’s mother, father and sister will take Baldwin’s deposition in a case brought against him and the makers of the film. The family claims that, in violation of safety protocols, Baldwin cocked and fired the gun even though the particular scene did not call for him to do so.

Hutchins’s question — “What can we do to make this better?” — remains the most resonant. She presumably meant it about camera shots. After her death its sentiment might also extend to ensuring full accountability around her death and rigorous safety protocols on movie sets. Together with Rust’s haunting landscapes, that might count as a proper memorial to Halyna Hutchins.