On September 26, the melodramatic western «The Dead Don’t Hurt» — the second feature film directed by the popular actor Viggo Mortensen, was released in cinemas. The Ukrainian premiere of the film took place in the summer at the Mykolaychuk OPEN festival in Chernivtsi. It was attended by the director, screenwriter, and lead actor. In his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said noted how Ukrainian viewers think the local events resonate with the disappointing present. What was the result of the movie in Aragorn — read our review.
Genre melodramatic western
Director Viggo Mortensen
Starring Viggo Mortensen, Vicki Crips, Solly MacLeod, Danny Huston, Garrett Dillahunt, Colin Morgan, Ray McKinnon, W. Earl Brown, Atlas Green, Luke Reilly, John Getz, Nadia Litz
Premiere movie theaters
Year of issue 2024
Website IMDb
1860s, USA. French-Canadian Vivienne Le Coudy rejects the advances of Lewis Cartwright, a pompous wealthy man with an impressive art collection, and meets Holger Olsen, a simple and taciturn carpenter. Together they move into the Danish immigrant’s remote cabin near the small town of Elk Flats in northern Nevada.
Not wanting to stay at home and do nothing, Vivienne gets a job at the local saloon, where the violent son of an influential landowner, Alfred Jeffries — Weston, likes to hang out. Later on, Olsen decides to join the Union Army during the Civil War, so his beloved is forced to be alone. When Weston visits her on one of these lonely evenings, it does not end well.
In this respect, Vivienne is somewhat similar to Natalie Portman’s character in the western «Jane Got a Gun» (2016). In that movie, the heroine was also waiting for her chosen one to return from the Civil War, got pregnant, and eventually, as you might guess, had to take up arms to defend herself against a gang of thugs led by the caricatured Ewan McGregor.
All of this is supported by the confident slowness of the narrative, which makes the viewer, who is tuned in to the merciless male showdown, risk getting bored. At the same time, the non-linear structure does not do the film any good, as it unnecessarily complicates an inherently simple story.
The first half of the film is devoted to introducing the characters and developing the romantic line of Vivienne and Holger. Frankly speaking, this is not the most exciting love story you’ve ever seen in a movie. It gets fascinating in the second half, when the heroine is left alone and an obvious conflict is outlined. Despite the fact that Solly McLeod’s character is a typical straightforward and primitively one-sided bastard, it is still quite interesting to watch the course of events.
As for Mortensen’s character, at one point his journey with the boy evokes memories of a post-apocalyptic «The Road» the difference is that the hero survived a personal apocalypse instead of some global catastrophe (as the localized title of the film hints at).
Mortensen’s film is rich in location shots with gorgeous sunny landscapes that are a pleasure to watch. Viewers who are rooting for justice to be done should not be disappointed either. In general, «The Dead Don’t Hurt» is more likely to appeal to those who are more comfortable with down-to-earth stories about ordinary people than those who are fond of super-long shots of rugged cowboys before they are ready to pull the trigger on their guns.