Viggo Mortensen’s second directorial effort delivers a powerful narrative of immigrant challenges and feminist strength in a turbulent frontier town. Vicky Krieps co-stars.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
While I have reservations about the confounding, circular editing of “The Dead Don’t Hurt,” Viggo Mortensen’s tragic, moving, impressive-looking Western, a tale of immigrant strife, feminist struggle, and violence on the Civil War-era American frontier, I was completely immersed in the story.
The film is Mortensen’s second outing as writer-director after 2020’s acclaimed “Falling,” and I believe it fits neatly into a tradition established and nourished by the likes of John Ford, Howard Hawks, Sam Peckinpah, and Clint Eastwood. Vivienne Le Coudy (Luxenbourgish-German actor Vicky Krieps, “Corsage”), the film’s heroine, is a French-Canadian immigrant whose father goes off to war when she is a little girl in flashback scenes, only to be hanged by the English, Vivienne ends up selling flowers in San Francisco, where she meets Danish immigrant, carpenter and former soldier Holger Olsen (actor-horseman Mortensen). Both Holger and Vivienne speak English with accents. A romance blossoms. He persuades her to accompany him back to his dead mice-infested cabin in Nevada (the film was shot in Durango, Mexico), where she rages about the lack of trees and flowers and sets about remedying the situation. Holger makes an effort to tame the land around the cabin and later also becomes the sheriff in a small town nearby. The town’s corrupt, and yet, for the most part, decent mayor Rudy Schiller (Danny Huston) conspires with rancher Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt) to get rich off mining and rail. Jeffries’ violent and unrestrained son Weston (Solly McLeod) runs roughshod over town, especially in the town saloon, where Vivienne, eager to help Holger with finances, gets a job. Some of the scenes involving Weston will remind viewers of the iconic Jack Palance role in the 1953 classic “Shane.”
“The Dead Don’t Hurt” is yet another film with multiple timelines that are closely interwoven, in some cases, I believe, after very few shots. It’s not exactly the “Everything Everywhere All At Once” of Westerns, but close. The love story of Holger and Vivienne is interrupted when, driven by debt and the romance of his military background, Holger enlists in the Union Army. Weston makes advances toward Vivienne in Holger’s absence. She resists. Holger returns, and he and Vivienne try to pick up where they left off. But happy endings are elusive in Mortensen’s dark, complex vision. The actor-director-writer has said that the French-speaking Vivienne was inspired by his mother. This and Krieps’ acting give Vivienne a stature exceeding the flawed and licentious men, Holger included. His decision to leave Vivienne on her own, where life is “nasty, brutish and short,” is hard for us to forgive. Krieps’ Vivienne, like her Empress Elisabeth in “Corsage,” is a complex and independent-minded woman struggling to make her way in a culture dominated by violent, power-hungry, money-grubbing males.
In the supporting cast, Ray McKinnon (“Rectify”) is a standout as a pious judge who is all too ready to consign a mentally-incompetent suspect to the “fiery lake of burning sulfur.” That is John Getz of “Blood Simple” (1984) and “The Fly” (1986) as the Reverend Simpson. As the saloon’s pianist and Vivienne’s piano teacher, Rafel Plana is a gentle soul in an unaccommodating world.
Mortensen has already established his cowboy cred in such films as “Appaloosa” (2008), the great “Hidalgo” (2004), and Aragorn in “The Lord of the Rings.” That is Anduril, the sword of Aragorn, in the film’s flashback to an imaginary meeting between little Vivienne and a knight-in-armor in a forest. When she was a girl, Vivienne’s mother read to her about Joan of Arc, and the girl asks the unanswered question, “Why do men fight?” Veteran cinematographer Marcel Zyskind (“Tristram Shandy”) serves up the look of classic Westerns (Peckinpah shot “The Wild Bunch” in Durango), showcasing the majesty of the surroundings and the beauty and dignity of the horses. That period-appropriate fiddle music you hear throughout the film was also composed by Mortensen. What can he not do?
‘The Dead Don’t Hurt’
Rating: R Violence, sexually suggestive content, and profanity.
Cast: Vicky Krieps, Viggo Mortensen, Solly McLeod, Danny Huston
Director: Mortensen
Writer: Mortensen
Running Time: 2 hours, 9 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, AMC Causeway, Liberty Tree Mall, and other suburban theaters
Grade: A-
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