Viggo Mortensen may be riding tall in the saddle, but co-star Vicky Krieps is the true central figure of the revisionist Western marking the actor’s sophomore effort as director-screenwriter after 2020’s Falling.
Making its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Dead Don’t Hurt features many classic attributes of the venerable genre, including a villain who literally wears a black hat. But it also offers a distinctly modern feminist take that makes it more a deeply moving romance than a traditional oater. Featuring excellent performances from its two leads, the film is a Western for people who don’t like Westerns.
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The Dead Don't Hurt
Set in the western frontier of the 1860s, the story begins with Mortensen’s character, a Danish immigrant, burying his wife who has died from an unspecified illness. We only learn what happened as the film progresses, depicting the courtship between Holger (Mortensen) and the French-Canadian Vivienne (Krieps) after they meet in San Francisco. Despite the fact that Vivienne is already involved with another man, a wealthy art dealer, the attraction between her and the taciturn but courtly Holger is instantaneous.
It isn’t long before she journeys with him to the remote Nevada town where he works as a carpenter for hire and moves into his barren cabin in a desolate valley surrounded only by dirt. The two enjoy a happy life together, with the independent-minded Vivienne selling flowers and taking a job at a local saloon. But when the Civil War breaks out, Holger impulsively enlists, leaving her to fend for herself.
It turns out to be a fateful decision, as it isn’t long before she’s brutally beaten and raped by Weston (British actor Solly McLeod, suitably loathsome), the violent son of a powerful rancher (Garret Dillahunt) who’s a business partner of the town’s corrupt mayor (Danny Huston, as good as his father John at projecting evil masquerading as charm). Everyone in town ignores the obvious heinous crime, which results in Vivienne giving birth to a son.
When Holger returns home years later, he’s shocked to discover Vivienne clutching a little boy (Atlas Green). When she recounts what happened, he immediately grabs a gun and starts to leave to confront Weston but she tells him that he’s already left town after having killed some Mexicans. Holger soon accepts the situation, raising the boy as his own and resuming his blissful domesticity with Vivienne, becoming the town’s sheriff along the way.
The film’s melodramatic, violent plot elements are ultimately less interesting than its subtle portrait of two mature, emotionally available individuals forming a loving bond despite numerous disagreements and harsh obstacles. The dialogue is mostly rudimentary — “How was your war?” Vivienne asks Holger upon his return, in a typical example — but the underlying emotions are fully conveyed by Mortensen and Krieps. The former underplays in typical fashion, letting his authoritative masculinity, diamond-cutting cheekbones (even buried under a thick beard at times) and commanding screen presence fill the screen, while Krieps delivers yet another astonishing turn in a career that already seems destined for greatness. Her Vivienne — warm yet steely, courageous yet vulnerable, fierce yet loving — is a complex, fascinating character who’s compelling every moment she’s onscreen.
Mortensen proves a sure hand behind the camera, infusing the slow-paced proceedings with an elegant visual style abetted by Marcel Zyskind’s handsome widescreen cinematography and a plaintive musical score he himself composed. The Dead Don’t Hurt feels more stylistically assured than the tonally wobbly if affecting Falling, and even the occasional missteps — such as an over-reliance on fantasy sequences in which Vivienne imagines her late father as a knight in armor — don’t prove detrimental to its overall power.
