Starring: Vicky Krieps, Viggo Mortensen, Solly McLeod, Garrett Delahunt
Distributor: Transmission Films
Runtime: 129 mins. Reviewed in Dec 2024
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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Two pioneers fight for their lives and their love on the American frontier during the Civil War.
Now veteran actor, Viggo Mortensen, became a household name when he appeared in the Lord of the Rings trilogy as Aragorn. Mortensen is not only an actor, he is a writer, musician, composer, and has brought all these talents to directing The Dead Don’t Hurt.
While the time period is that of the American Civil War, the action takes place on the Nevada border and the war itself seems distant. Which means that the film is set in the West – its saloon, gamblers, sheriff, shootouts – but the story is told in such a way that it could take place at any time.
The film opens, significantly because of his title, with a death. There is also a violent shootout in the streets, a court case, a lynching execution. But we have to pay attention because the film moves both forward and with flashbacks, important for the audience to gauge which is which to appreciate the characters and the dramatic development. Sometimes this is something of a challenge.
In the flashbacks, we are introduced to Holger Olsen (Mortensen), of Scandinavian background. He arrives in a port, eager to make his way in America. But, the audience has also had a long introduction to a young girl of French background, Vivienne. Her father was executed by the British. Vivienne is a forthright young girl with an imagination (including a knight in armour coming to visit her, a scene with which the film opens and will recur). Olson and Vivienne hit it off immediately and they travel to the Nevada border, setting up house. Olson is a capable builder, working for some of the money men in the local town.
Vivienne (Krieps) is the core of the drama and our emotional response.
Audiences need to keep checking on the timespan. After a while, there is a visit and plea from a recruiting agent for men to serve in the war. Olsen, despite Vivienne’s protests, volunteers and is absent for many years, with only some letters getting through.
At the dramatic centre of the film is Vivienne’s coping during Olsen’s absence, the working in the local bar, hired by the moneyed man, but aggravated by his irresponsible sociopathic son. There are dire consequences for everyone concerned and, gradually, the storytelling arrives back at the violence in the streets, and at the death scene we first saw.
As expected, ultimately, this is also an avenging Western.
The film is intriguing, playing with the audience’s appreciation of characters and story, the interplay and tension between the past and the present – and, with the death, the irony of the title and its implication that the living do hurt.
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