Review of “The Dead Don’t Hurt”: A Foursquare Western by Viggo Mortensen

In his effort to revive the Western film, Viggo Mortensen – who composed the music, wrote the screenplay, and played the lead role in “The Dead Don’t Hurt” – delivers several different Westerns in one.

Aside from the deathbed prologue, the film initially seems to be in the law-and-order corner of the genre. Mortensen, a grieving sheriff named Holger Olsen, seems skeptical when a local fool is accused of six murders and reportedly claims to remember none of them. The local courthouse—a makeshift facility cobbled together in the bar—is not the most forgiving place for the wrongfully accused, or for anyone. (At one point, instead of banging a gavel on the floor to restore order, the judge fires a gun upward twice, then looks at the ceiling to make sure it doesn’t collapse.)

We’ve already seen the killer. Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod), the spoiled and vicious son of the area’s leading rancher, Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt), is introduced in the middle of his rampage scene: he is first seen coming out of the saloon and casually shooting two people in a single shot before the title card appears dangling over a corpse.

But before The Dead Don’t Hurt can become a film about a good sheriff’s efforts to right a miscarriage of justice, it tells the story of another character, Vivienne Le Coudy (played as an adult by Vicky Krieps). A snappier, more classically staged Western might have shown her off-screen, relegating her to the sheriff’s backstory.

Mortensen paints on a larger canvas, giving his film a convoluted, sometimes needlessly complicated structure. (Vivienne’s childhood in France and Canada gets its own, somewhat superfluous flashbacks.) When the adult Vivienne meets Olsen – she prefers to call him by his last name – they set about building a life together. Olsen is a skilled carpenter; Vivienne has a talent for poultry hunting. She tidies up his dusty, dreary property and inspires him to add some greenery.

But all is not well on the estate, as civil war is looming. Olsen, who served as a soldier for his native Denmark, believes it is a moral obligation to fight for the Union and leaves Vivienne at home to fight in what Olsen later realizes is her own war, in which the rapacious Weston is her main opponent.

Shot mostly in Durango, Mexico, Mortensen skillfully managed to separate the perspectives and dramas – when Olsen goes off to war, the film gives Vivienne the lead role – without ever losing interest or proportion. Only the ending, a poetic farewell that is too gentle for the grim spectacle that preceded it and too far removed from its themes, feels like a weak point.

But even then, with performances this good, it’s hard to care much. Both Krieps and Mortensen benefit immensely from cinematographer Marcel Zyskind’s sensitive use of sunlight and shadow, and McLeod is a fearsome brute. Mortensen’s ambitions may be old-fashioned, but they are big ambitions, and he has realized them in a beautiful, passionate project.

The dead don’t hurt
Age rating R due to gun violence and sexual assault. Running time: 2 hours 9 minutes. In cinemas.