The Dead Don't Hurt

Greetings again from the darkness. It's fairly common for a film to open with a dramatic scene and then take us back for a period of time to show how the story arrived at this point. Of course, the other logical option would be to have that scene serve as the beginning of the story. What happens with this film is rare: The storytelling goes backwards AND forwards. We learn how the characters got to this point and we learn what happens after this moment. The person to thank for this is writer-director Viggo Mortensen. Highly regarded as an actor for years, Mortensen had one previous filmmaking project, FALLING (2020), which made the festival rounds.

Starring as Holger Olsen, Mortensen is a man trying to live a quiet life on the frontier in the 1860's. He spots lovely Vivienne (Vicky Krieps, excellent in PHANTOM THREAD, 2017) having a spat with her well off boyfriend, and very quickly she's drawn to Holger's flirtations. Her making the choice to leave a comfortable upper-crust life for a more challenging one with Holger, gives us a glimpse into the inner-strength and determination of this woman. Soon she is turning his dusty cabin into a home by cleaning, planting a garden, and adding touches of convenience ... such as they were 160+ years ago. And speaking of decisions, Holger makes a life-changing one when he decides to enlist to go fight in the Civil War. It's a decision she tries hard to talk him out of.

While he is soldiering, we learn much about the little town where Vivienne is stuck. A corrupt Mayor Schiller (the always smarmy Danny Huston) is in cahoots with his equally sleazy business partner Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, 2007), as they work their master plan of getting rich at the expense of others. Alfred tries his best to control his combustible son, Weston (Solly McLeod), who takes his entitlement to sometimes violent extremes against those weaker than him. Weston takes a real interest in Vivienne, and despite her best efforts, things go wrong between them.

A few years pass and Holger returns. In a brilliant bit of acting and surgical dialogue, Vivienne asks him, "How was your war?" The two work to re-establish their relationship in the wake of the changes that have occurred. When that opening scene comes back around, Holger sets off on a journey for personal revenge. In addition to the two timelines mentioned above, we also get flashbacks (sometimes via dreams) of Vivienne's childhood. By this time, we understand Vivienne and Holger very well. 'Still waters run deep' is a passage that came to mind while watching, and it should also be noted that filmmaker Mortensen and cinematographer Marcel Zyskind (DALILAND, 2022 and a frequent collaborator with Michael Winterbottom) include some wonderful shots of waterfalls, rivers, mountains, and vistas ... the breathtaking shots we appreciate from the western genre. The film deliberately moves slowly (as the times dictate) and captures the hardships of living off the land, and the struggles of separation, yet it also addresses one man's vengeance as necessary before he can move on. We find ourselves not surprised that Viggo Mortensen the talented and intelligent actor is also Viggo Mortensen the talented and intelligent filmmaker.

In theaters May 31, 2024.

6/10 for this western based love story, written and directed by Viggo Mortensen, it's a visually great looking film but the characters and story just don't really grip at all. And feels very long and gets long in the tooth. Acting is good, but can't save the sloth like action, a disappointing film, not the worst out there this month, but worth the trip, maybe not. Viggo, I think, can make a good director, and the music, also by him, works well, but the story, just did not do much for me, and this is the first of the western film genre films, coming out this year, not the best start, who will go see this film??

Beautiful story about the love of two outsiders in the countryside, where they just want to survive and build a home, and trying to keep the distance from the archetypical western "heroes". Wonderfully photographed tale, and Viggo Mortensen did his best as a director, actor, writer and composer. Sometimes, it's a bit too slow, otherwise, I appreciate that they didn't fill the story with common cowboy stuffs and self-serving violance - Mortensen's movie isn't about the danger and corruption of the west, but about independence and strong, unique connection between lovers. I really like the middle part, where the film switched to Vivienne's subjective perspective.

I always dream of a return of the great cowboy movie. Not that there haven't been honorable attempts - Lawrence Kasdan, Ron Howard, Tom Selleck. Now we have The DEAD DON'THURT. Hopes rise as we open with drunken psychopath Solly McLeod exiting the saloon, where he's shot four people, and taking down a wounded local and the agreeable boy deputy on his way. Star-director-writer-producer-musician Viggo Mortensen pulls his weight there, making McLeod the nastiest bad guy in memory. Frank Faylen, in WHISPERING SMITH, shooting people just to see them jump, seems neighborly by comparison.

Ah but there's more. The frontier proves to be in the hands of avaricious land grabbers with a side line in vice. The admirable Danny Huston's speech about expanding the one saloon to house "sporting ladies" sets the tone. There's Ray McKinnon's bought judge contrasted with the indignant girl who has to be silenced when she is the one person to stand and speak out in his court or the appalled town doctor who refuses to charge for his ominous visit. There is a complete world here, one that's subtly different from the ones we know from earlier films, more savage, more connected to the earth.

Mortenson is really good with performers. Putting him opposite now star of the moment Vicky Krieps makes this one compulsory viewing. We first see her bored with the well dressed suitor who will not stand for that, dismissing her as "not the freshest either." It sets her up nicely as the idealised frontier woman, a suitable mate to roll in manure with fellow European migrant, war veteran Mortenson.

The film is full of nice pieces of staging - Viggo initiating his courtship by offering Krieps a slice of salmon on the flat of his Bowie knife, the pair of them reaching the isolated house he has used his carpenter skills to build in what seems an inexplicable choice among all the empty Nevada land ("What do you do?" "As little as possible.") her dropping her two bags as she faces the horses she has loaded her chair onto, - even the lamp wick dimming after the assault. He manages the use of the convincing Heaven's Gate-like setting - boots ringing on the timber board walks, the shadow of the rain on window glass falling on faces or scenic panoramas like the striking (Mexican) rock outcrops that telegraph the fact that we are going to see bullets impacting them.

Viggo has kind of crept up on us, doing support parts in conspicuous movies for forty years until he became someone whose efforts automatically rated our attention. I hate to say that there's too much Viggo here but as a producer, he should have congratulated himself on his stringed instrument skills, gone off to one side and told himself director Viggo needs more editing discipline.

The DEAD DON'T HURT is plagued by unwelcome elaboration. Throwing the military medal off the cliff just doubles up on the lead's view of the Civil war, moving from "fighting against slavery" to "not what I expected." The whole flashback structure just makes it hard to follow and dissipates the action movie energy. The knight in armor is mystifying at first and dim when it's explained - the Indian girl with the fish? Joan of Arc?

Somewhere buried in the over-length The Dead DON'T HURT there is a superior, atmospheric example waiting to take its place in the new cycle of ultra sadistic westerns, along with The BONE TOMYHAWK or The HATEFUL EIGHT I kind of feel I was cheated out of it.

And trust me when I say I did not like saying that. I really hoped this would be something along the lines of The power of the dog, another low key, slow thoughtful western but sadly it wasn't in the same league. The characters weren't overly fleshed out, the most important part of the plot did not make a whole lot of sense. Why would you take a woman back to the remote place that you live only to leave. In the end the independent lady had to become a victim she couldn't be left alone after all, she needed a man to look after her. And finally we get to a revenge movie and even that is reached at a walk. Overall quite forgettable I am sorry to say.