Rent The Dead Don't Hurt (2023)

Intriguing Western Romance - The Dead Don't Hurt review by GI

This slow burning frontier western from writer, director, actor and composer Viggo Mortensen is rather an intriguing film. All the tropes of the western are present, revenge, violence, corruption, but delivered in a narrative that has a gentle rather beautiful arc, all delivered with a great visual eye and wonderful characters many of whom are also typical, such as the weasly Town Mayor (Danny Huston), the corrupt land baron (Garret Dillahunt), and the psychotic violent son (Solly McLeod). However this is a story of French Canadian immigrant Vivienne (Vicky Krieps), a fiercely independent woman who breaks off a relationship with a wealthy man to take up with Olsen (Mortensen), a Danish immigrant who takes her to his small shack in Nevada where they live in relative peace near the local town dominated by the Jeffries clan (Dillahunt and McLeod). When the Civil War breaks out Olsen heads off to war leaving Vicky alone and where she receives the unwelcome attention of the younger Jeffries. The ingredients of the western are all here but they are presented in a structure that weaves between different time lines that may jar at first but soon fall carefully into place. Mortensen presents the wild violence of frontier life in the 1860s but weaves the unique romance of the two main characters into it in a story that inevitably heads for tragedy. In that sense this is a rather compelling western made by a filmmaker who's self effacing nature leads to a fulfilling film.

Viggo likes being outside and riding horses - The Dead Don't Hurt review by HW

Viggo’s love for the western really comes through in his Labour of love. This feels both like a traditional, sweeping romance with enough stark, original twists to make it stand out from other cowboy films, like a non-linear narrative. Thanks to Viggo’s direction, this film looks and sounds beautiful (especially since he composed the melancholic score). The story and performances are both touching and raw. I also like how Viggo tried to portray America as a land of emigrants rather than rootin-tootin cowpokes. This is more of a lyrical period drama than your average action western, but the violence is still brutal and shocking for the community, like in ‘Unforgiven’. Nice one, Viggo.

Well-intentioned but ultimately forgettable 'neo-western'. - The Dead Don't Hurt review by PD

From the second scene of Mortensen’s second feature, audiences know the fate of Vivienne LeCoudy (Vicky Krieps). A resilient French Canadian pioneer woman left alone for years, Vivienne dies at home in bed, a single tear making tracks on her cheek. Mortensen opts to tell her story out of order, flashing back to Vivienne’s childhood and then carrying on past her death to reveal whether her absentee partner (played by Mortensen) manages to avenge what happened to her. For me, the nonlinear narrative choice doesn't serve to add much, and I'm coming away feeling that the film falls between two stools, being neither a conventional western nor something to keep 'art house' fans watching long. Set during the Civil War but perhaps made with a mindset more in line with the #MeToo era, Mortensen’s take on a traditionally violent genre opens with Vivienne’s dying vision of a knight in shining armour coming to rescue her. That fantasy occurs twice more in the film, which stays behind with Vivienne as fellow immigrant and all-but-husband Holger Olsen enlists to defend the Union. The next time we see the knight, he lifts the visor to reveal Holger’s eyes beneath the helmet. Later, Vivienne pictures herself inside the armour, a self-reliant, modern-day Joan of Arc. In a feminist twist on the John Wayne paradigm, the film allows Vivienne to be her own saviour (sort of). But before she makes that breakthrough, Vivienne must endure all manner of indignity and disrespect from one of the local men.

Krieps is ideal casting for this uniquely tender-strong character, and she gives a fine performance. Faced with the choice between a comfortable life in a golden cage and whatever Holger may have to offer, Vivienne decides to travel west with him, only to find that the home’s a dump and the town’s corrupt. Films rarely frame that experience from the woman’s perspective, which makes Mortensen’s enlightened approach refreshing, even if Vivienne’s independence manifests itself in a way that anyone can sense is bad news. But after so many subtleties, it’s unfortunate that Mortensen relies on rape as a plot device, though Vivienne’s reaction reinforces the strength she finds in Holger’s absence, during which Vivienne transforms their scrappy patch of nothing into a proper home, with a thriving garden and plants blooming all around the porch. (She probably should have opened a flower stand in town, rather than find work at the saloon, but then I guess Mortensen couldn’t have made his statement about what dastardly predators men can be). When Holger returns, it’s to the scene that opened the film, just in time to watch Vivienne die. But being the film’s spine, without her, the film rather tails off somewhat.

At its best, it gives us a sampling of what life on the untamed frontier could be like. But, Vivienne excepted, the characters are made out of cardboard, notably the villain, who is simply a sadistic, monstrous cartoon, conveniently clothed in black, as if we’d have any trouble figuring out he’s the baddy. Ultimately, though, it's the film’s didacticism lets it down, for the ruin that comes to Holger's life and Vivienne’s is presented as a reward for his loyalty and commitment to doing what he sees as the right thing, and for me this comes across as glibly schematic, a truly ugly lesson. All in all, a well-meant piece but for me all a bit forgettable.