My Rust screening experience occurred at Camerimage in Torun, Poland, where the film had its world premiere. I sat in a dark, unheated office upstairs in the Jordanki theater with director Joel Souza, his wife, and a lawyer. Together we watched the film on a link from Souza's laptop.
Rust might be a masterpiece or a failure, but it will never lose the stigma of being the film that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. The production was halfway through its production schedule when the shooting took place. Filming resumed with replacement cinematographer Bianca Cline some 18 months later, in a different state, with different cast and crew members.
The story concerns two orphaned brothers slowly starving to death on a desolate farm. While hunting a wolf, Lucas (Patrick Scott McDermott), the older boy, kills a neighboring bully and farmer. With no one to defend him, Lucas is sentenced to hang for premeditated murder.
Alerted by his mother's sister (played by a magnificent Frances Fisher), grandfather and notorious outlaw Harland Rust (Alec Baldwin) breaks Lucas out of jail, killing everyone they encounter in the process. They're soon pursued by sheriff Wood Helm (Josh Hopkins) and his men, a separate posse, and assorted bounty hunters eager to collect the reward.
The chase takes place across expansive landscapes captured in exquisite detail by Hutchins' camera. On the other hand, many scenes unfold in the same locations used by other recent Westerns. Conversations in saloons, around campfires at night, in frontier cabins could have been shot anywhere.
Souza's sources are obvious: The Searchers (many shots through open doors), Sergio Leone, True Grit (as when two disheveled trappers turn murderous), and especially Unforgiven.
Another connection: Kevin Costner's Horizon. Both films feature several story lines spread across the Western frontier that slowly converge. With its dark, violent tone and distrust of society, Rust is actually a stronger, more focused movie than Horizon.
But Rust cannot escape the fact that Hutchins died. The pervasive gunplay and violence only emphasize her demise. Like watching Paul Walker in Furious 7, you're always waiting for 'the moment' in Rust. Even when 'the scene' fails to appear, every death in the movie is a jarring reminder of what happened.
If you could somehow remove that death from Rust, what kind of Western would it be? It's impossible to determine, because when Souza resumed shooting, he was working with an expanded schedule.
That meant he could include scenes that very likely would never have been originally shot -- or else would have been removed to keep the running time under two hours. Way too much time in Rust is devoted to back story. Judicious trimming could eliminate a lot of superfluous information. There is a stronger movie lurking within this cut.
Not everyone at Camerimage wanted these screenings to be scheduled. I talked with both Souza and Cline, and feel that they are doing the best they can in a terrible situation. There are valid arguments for and against releasing Rust, which at this writing does not have a distributor in the US. It's a shame the movie can't escape the circumstances surrounding it.
The film screened at the Camerimage International Film Festival in Torun, Poland.