Year:2024

Runtime: 129 minutes

Writer/ Director: Viggo Mortensen

Starring: Vicky Krieps, Viggo Mortensen, Colin Morgan, Solly McLeod

By Sarah Manvel

Onscreen, Viggo Mortensen projects a righteousness that comes across like a mountain – solid, immovable and attractively dangerous. At the Glasgow Film Festival Q&A he was clearly nervous, which feels such at odds with his screen persona that it was a surprise, not to mention quite endearing. But he also spoke very highly of his lead actress, Vicky Krieps, which isn’t a surprise at all. “The Dead Don’t Hurt” stands and falls on her performance even though this is in a movie which Mr Mortensen wrote, directed, starred in, composed the music for, and played on the soundtrack of. The Dead Don’t Hurt is not a complete success, which is not Ms Krieps’ fault. It’s because there’s only so far one woman can go on her own in a world made by and for men. 

Vivienne (Ms Krieps) is a florist in 1860 San Francisco when she and Olsen (Mr Mortensen) encounter each other. He is at a quayside market eating a snack when he observes a woman in a red shawl dispatching an irritating suitor (Colin Morgan). Vivienne notices him watching her and approaches, so Olsen offers her a bite of his food from the end of his knife. In short order Vivienne has given up her life in the city and moved to Olsen’s remote farm, where he has drifted in search of a quiet life after leaving behind Denmark and his experiences in its recent war. Vivienne herself was raised in Canada, by now-dead French-speaking parents who taught her stories of Jeanne d’Arc, and as a girl she decided that in this life she would be like Jeanne and fight for herself. 

But the movie begins with Vivienne’s death. So the story of how she and Olsen set up housekeeping, as well as the choices Olsen makes in the aftermath of her death, is told in a nonlinear fashion that both emphasizes her importance to Olsen’s life while also, unfortunately, removing her agency as a full part of it. Since we know she dies the story of the film becomes not Vivienne’s life and suffering but how Olsen reacts to it. This only just swerves cliché because the suffering was caused after Olsen decided to go fight for the union side in the American Civil War, leaving Vivienne alone and unprotected from the worst aspects of the old west, personified by violent rich boy Weston Jefferies (Solly McLeod, who makes a very strong impression). Choosing to fight slavery is an admirable thing but so is keeping safe the woman you love.

Regardless of the value of his sacrifice, we see not one moment of Olsen’s war, which is a pretty radical decision, especially in a movie created by the director as a star vehicle for himself. A western about a woman remains fairly unusual even if what happens to a woman in the old west is not. It’s also unusual in this show-and-tell modern era for choices to be depicted entirely through action, with the dialogue discussing what’s for dinner instead of repeating the obvious. You shouldn’t need to be told someone’s upset when their reaction to some news is to pick up a gun and head for the door. At one point Vivienne comes to a major decision with her back to the camera, which we only realise when she drops the bags she’s carrying. And the relationship between Olsen and Vivienne is mainly expressed in their being together, drinking coffee and bickering about the chores and the heat. Though dialogue like that is more than enough when Olsen can simply turn his regard to Vivienne and enable the audience to feel the avalanche overtaking the mountain.

But thanks to that disdain of the obvious, Mr Mortensen also balked at showing some of the most important moments in Vivienne’s life. This somehow leaves the surprising impression that Ms Krieps is underused. At one point there’s a silent confrontation between Vivienne and Weston in which Weston cannot meet her eyes, which the movie seems to think is a victory for her. It may well be, but it’s not justice, though the sequence where Olsen buries Vivienne in silence has already made it clear justice is impossible. The question becomes what, if anything, there is to be done. 

The final confrontation, beautifully shot by Marcel Zyskind, manages again to just about swerve cliché while allowing Mr Mortensen to play to his righteously solid strengths. And it’s those strengths which made “The Dead Don’t Hurt” worth seeing despite its flaws. Let’s hope in his next movie he’s able to take the lessons learned here and put them to even more innovative use.