Back in ye old days, received wisdom had it that it was a reasonably safe bet to release a thoughtful and mature art-housey film around the same time as a big dumb studio blockbuster, in the hope that while the majority were going to the latter, a small minority that appreciated intelligence, restraint, etc, would give the former a chance. Now, as you may have heard, 2024 is on course to have the worst non-pandemic box office figures since 1995 (the year of Judge Dredd and Batman Forever), so if this will still hold true at a time when only a small minority seem to even be interested in blockbusters is anyone's guess. (As we have discussed, Challengers and La chimera have enjoyed unusually long and successful runs, so it does seem like the sands have shifted somewhat.)

Anyway, this week's main bit of counter-programming (because I'm not going anywhere near Bad Boys: Ride or Die, thank you very much) is The Dead Don't Hurt. One of the key duties of the producer of any movie is to carefully assess the qualities required for all the key roles (screenwriter, director, lead actor, composer, etc) and then carefully and impartially choose the right candidate. One of the producers of The Dead Don't Hurt, and indeed the only one most people are likely to have heard of, is Viggo Mortensen.

Now, there are few classier acts in the world of cinema than Viggo Mortensen, who rather impressively managed to parlay the considerable success he accrued from being in Lord of the Rings into a distinguished career scoring multiple Oscar nominations for his acting, in addition to being a fine arts photographer, poet, musician, and small-press publisher. Plus my mum's always thought he was very dishy. Dishy he may be, but his public image gives the impression of someone a bit intimidating and intense (this is someone who burns his fanmail unopened, according to one of his websites), so it is perhaps not entirely surprising that the film is not exactly a knockabout romp.

To begin with, the film has a rather cryptic, non-sequential structure, which initially makes what's going on a bit tricky to figure out – a brave choice from the writer, Viggo Mortensen. Eventually it becomes clear, however. Top-billed is Vicky Krieps, here playing a French-speaking Californian woman living in San Francisco round about 1860. Her relationship with a wealthy, controlling man (Colin Morgan) has turned sour, so she abandons him in favour of handsome, taciturn, Danish cowboy Holger Olsen (Viggo Mortensen).

Olsen takes Vivienne back to the place he has decided to settle in, a small wooden cabin not far from a town on the edge of the wilderness. It looks fairly unpromising but at least the scenery is nice. Olsen gets on with building a large number of barns (possibly a call-back to Mortensen's first film role), while Vivienne, who is not going to be anyone's housewife, lands herself a job helping out in the local saloon. Here she crosses the path of Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod), the sociopathic son of the local tycoon (this is a bit of a stock character in Westernland, but McLeod does his best with it).

Well, before anyone knows it, it's time for the American civil war, and Olsen feels compelled to do his duty and enlist, little suspecting he's going to be away for quite a few years. In the meantime Vivienne does her best to keep the farm going while doing her saloon job, but Jeffries' attentions become harder and harder to avoid.

So: this is another example of what usually gets called a 'revisionist western', which essentially means that nobody wears a white hat or has a particularly enjoyable time. (This seems to have become the dominant mode of the genre, certainly in the last thirty years or so.) And I think this is a rather good one, although the irony of a Canadian-Mexican-Danish co-production making such a good job of one of the great American mythic archetypes was not lost on me.

One of the things which marks it out as a departure from the old-school type of western is the fact that much of the story is told from the perspective of a woman. The film isn't especially graphic, but it does make clear that a woman's experience of the American frontier could be profoundly different from a man's, in terms of their rights, freedom, and agency; Vivienne's only response most of the time is a sort of determined stoicism and refusal to rely on anyone else – Olsen doesn't come across as being particularly understanding of her situation, not least in the way he goes off to war pretty much off his own bat, leaving her alone in a small isolated cabin.

The film isn't relentlessly grim, though there aren't a lot of laughs, either. The lighter elements come from some stunning landscapes, and the quieter moments of freedom and camaraderie that occur between the characters. The director maintains this low-key style very effectively, helped by an authentically folksy score (the composer is a V. Mortensen) with some sensitive performances (playing the piano, and several other instruments, is a guy called Viggo something-or-other). There are some interesting non-naturalistic touches, too, such as a dream sequence in which a young Vivienne has visions of a knight in full armour, presumably representing some ideal of virtue (the knight is carrying Anduril, Mortensen's sword from Lord of the Rings, which apparently Peter Jackson had to personally okay – this one factlet seems to have formed the foundation for much of the publicity for The Dead Don't Hurt).

In the end the story resolves as, possibly, a revenge thriller, although the script is intelligent enough to leave many elements of the story open for the viewer to interpret. Apart from this there's relatively little action, however, and perhaps it's best to think of this more as a costume drama than a western per se. Anyone who can cope with the slow pace and refusal of the film to spoon-feed the plot will find something very rewarding, with moments of striking drama. A very worthy achievement from Viggo Mortensen, in all his capacities on the production.

Awix

24.06.24 Front Page

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