New Release Review – ‘The Dead Don’t Hurt’



Viggo Mortensen Traps was exactly the kind of intimate, chatty drama you’d expect an actor to choose for his debut as a writer/director. For his sequel, Mortensen has opted for something that at first glance seems very different, a western, but although there is gun-slinging, horse riding and a black-clad villain, it is actually a character-based western of the sort. which were common before the Italians reduced the genre to the basics of action.

A good actor knows that film acting is about 90% physical and 10% verbal, so it’s no surprise that the likes of Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner and now Mortensen are drawn to the Western genre as directors. It offers the chance to play silent men who keep their emotions bottled up and presents the challenge of conveying psychology visually rather than relying on dialogue (not having to worry about lore lines probably helps if you’re also directing).

Mortensen’s Holger Olsen is a classic, strong and silent Western hero, but he is also sensitive and thoughtful, a thinking man’s marksman. Holger, a recent immigrant from Denmark in the 1860s, visits San Francisco because he wants to see “the end of the world.” It is at the end of the world that he finds the beginning of a new life when he attracts the attention of Vivienne (Vicky Krieps), a society lady whose life of polite sophistication is contrasted with flashbacks to her childhood as a trapper’s daughter in rural Quebec. Seeing Holger’s unkempt form in a city square stirs something primal in Vivienne. The two seem very different, but they are both strangers in this new world, and perhaps Holger reminds Vivienne of the father she lost to the noose of a British executioner as a child.

Holger takes Vivienne out of her hoity life in San Fran and to his home in the Californian desert. Initially shocked by a land as rough and rugged as the man she has fallen for, Vivienne eventually makes it a home. But when Holger signs up to fight for the Union in the Civil War, Vivienne is left alone and soon becomes the target of the predatory Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeodan actor so American that before I Googled his name I knew he would inevitably be British), son of local land baron Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt).

Now that Viggo is absent for a large part of the film, Vivienne van Krieps takes center stage. Westerns with female protagonists tend to impose the feminist mores of whatever era they are made in, resulting in anachronistic characters who are little more than renamed male characters. Although Vivienne is rebellious and stands up for herself, she does so in a way that never feels like a woman from 2024 has been dropped into 1860s America. In the aftermath of a shocking incident, she does not fall into the usual stereotype of the avenging woman who teaches herself to shoot before taking violent revenge, but tries to pretend it never happened and tries to move on with her life despite being surrounded through constant reminders of her transgression.

In combination with Mortensen, Krieps initially beautifully plays Vivienne’s attraction with the aloofness of a schoolgirl, before she gives in to her feelings. There is a palpable chemistry between the couple, although they never marry and never verbally express their mutual love. It’s all in the way they look at each other, and how sometimes they can’t bear to look at the other. There are moments when it seems as if Holger is about to start a speech or a tirade, but then holds back as if he doesn’t have the words or knows they won’t do him any good. The scene where Vivienne breaks the news that she has taken a job at the town salon as Holger reveals that he has been hired is beautifully played, with the two lovers angry at each other’s decision while fully understanding their motivations.

As a director, Mortensen makes great strides with his second film, demonstrating a talent for subtly placing and moving his camera to enhance rather than distract from the human drama. The emotionally charged scene where Holger goes to war accomplishes a lot with a simple side camera track that ends on Vivienne’s tear-stained face as the man she loves fades into the background.

Where Mortensen’s relative lack of experience is perhaps betrayed is in his decision to opt for a non-linear structure in which the main story plays out in flashbacks, with further flashbacks within those same flashbacks. I’m not sure what he was thinking when he chose to open the film by revealing the ultimate fate of one of its protagonists, as it’s a decision that makes subsequent revelations redundant. There’s also a strange imbalance in the importance of certain supporting characters, most notably Dillahunt’s Jeffries and the town’s mayor (Danny Huston in one of his signature sniveling rich man roles). Early on, they are shown a long scene laying out their evil plans for the city, but a subplot develops that never materializes. It’s like The dead don’t hurt was ultimately cut from a longer script, with Mortensen forgetting to cut off a few loose ends. Perhaps a more understandable director’s cut will appear at some point in the future.

Directed by: Viggo Mortensen

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Vicky Krieps, Danny Huston, Solly McLeod, Garret Dillahunt, Colin Morgan, Ray McKinnon, Luke Reilly, Atlas Green

Eric Hillis is a film critic living in Sligo, Ireland and running the website TheMovieWaffler.com