The name of actor, producer and director Viggo Mortensen can easily convince most people to watch almost anything they can get attached to. Looking back at his extensive filmography spanning almost 40 years, it's safe to say: for good reason. At first glance, The Dead Don't Hurt may seem harmless enough (a Western set at the dawn of the American Civil War), but give it ten minutes and it will quench the thirst of any moviegoer who longs to see a Sheriff Viggo, as the object of mockery of Eureka by Lisandro Alonso.
Mortensen's western presented in Toronto is his second feature film as a director after 2020's Falling and was presented to the public at the Luxembourg City Film Festival as this year's closing title and as part of a tribute to the artist.
Director: Viggo MortensenWriter: Viggo MortensenStars: Vicky Krieps, Viggo Mortensen, Solly McLeod
The Dead Don't Hurt begins with a sequence that is both a prologue and an ending: a knight in full armor rides through a green forest, the iron shining as bright as the sunlight peeking through the treetops. the trees. In the blink of an eye all that disappears; It was just a dream, or a childhood memory (aren't they the same thing?).
Then, we see a woman (Vicky Krieps) on her deathbed, taking her last breath. A slow zoom out reveals a man (Mortensen) sitting on the bed; Silently, he closes her eyes forever. His shared silence persists, from this beginning to the end of the film, piercing Western tropes and (historically accurate) period settings with Cupid's pointed arrows: love is only possible when the world is changing.
Vivienne Le Coudy (Krieps) is the true protagonist of the story. This is not a western directed by women (not in the way one might expect, although she, in particular, wields a gun), but The Dead Don't Hurt is a film about a woman in a western. Vivienne is French Canadian, but lives in San Francisco; she sells flowers at the market and occasionally dines with elegant but utterly boring gentlemen. Most important of all, she refuses to marry. Her mind is not carried away by even a charming carpenter, no matter how much she likes him. Holger Olsen (Mortensen) is a war veteran, a Danish immigrant who now calls America home and exudes a sense of dignity and humble affection whenever he meets Vivienne's gaze. However, the promise of a picturesque life together in Elk Flats, Nevada, in a small house with plenty of room for trees to grow and gardens to flourish, is soon broken.
Everyone in town bows down to the Jeffries clan, a wealthy landowner and his son, Weston (played by a ruthless Solly McLeod, a new face you may recognize from House of the Dragon), who won't take no for an answer. Under the mayor's protection (it only takes a few seconds for Danny Huston to excel in a morally corrupt role), the Jeffries become untouchable and Vivienne exceptionally vulnerable when Holger decides to fight for the Union in the Civil War. Love is challenged, love is postponed: the audience spends long days and nights with Vivienne as she pours beer in the drawing room and tends her roses.
In these quiet scenes, Krieps softens, her character attuned to every rhythm and mood of those around her, though she never lets any of it get to her. She is unwavering, sometimes almost rigid, but always true to the values of a self-sufficient woman in a male-dominated environment. Both Krieps and Mortensen bring out the best in each other and every scene they share is full of emotion, making The Dead Don't Hurt perhaps the most romantic (and realistic) western of our time.
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