Original-Cin Chat: The Dead Don't Hurt's Viggo Mortensen on Why the Old West is All in the Details
By John Kirk
Speaking from experience, teaching history to young folks is challenging. The most common question is, “Why would they do that?” The answer usually is, “Because that’s just the way it was back then.”
That leads to details, context and lifestyles far removed from the comfortable ones we enjoy today.
That became the crux of our conversation with actor and director Viggo Mortensen about his historically detailed cinematic achievement, The Dead Don’t Hurt (his second directorial turn after 2020’s Falling). The movie, which played at the Toronto International Film Festival, debuts on digital and VOD starting Tuesday, July 16 in the U.S. and Canada. Read our review of the film here.
The Dead Don’t Hurt tells the story of Holger Olsen (Mortensen) and Vivienne Le Coudy (Vicky Krieps), who set out to make a life for themselves in the desolate, 1860s town of Elk Flats, Nevada. That is, before the Civil War intervenes, and Vivienne is left to fend for herself against ugly realities, bearing a child while Holger fights for the Union.
“I’m glad you appreciated the detail. We worked really hard as a team on that,” Mortensen says. “Whether it was production design, architecture, the town, San Francisco, props, costumes, weapons, everything that you see. Even the flora when Olsen and the boy travel. Every detail that you see, we were really careful.”
But it wasn’t just the visual aspects that contributed to the authenticity of this meticulously crafted film, it was also the in-period characterizations, behaviour, dialogue and even body language that was present in the actors’ performances.
“Tailoring, depending on the characters’ background, the vocabulary, their tone and their speech, dialects and a certain amount of ethnic and linguistic diversity – which is historically true to the period. This fits a Western frontier town but also San Francisco.
“Unless you were an Indigenous person, people came from different places. There have been westerns that reflect that to an extent, but not in the lead characters. In storytelling, the more detail-oriented, the more specific you can be, the more detailed and accurate, the more universal the storytelling.
“In Olsen’s case, he has a background in the Three Years War (between Prussia and Denmark). He’s seen military service. With Vivienne, it’s the way she speaks French. Their vocabularies are different. The vocabulary of the mayor, played by Danny Huston, he’s probably the only university-educated person in the whole region, as compared to Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt) who is a man of few words. But he has his own quaint turns of phrases that I researched and are accurate to the period. All of these things were important to us to portray a picture of historical accuracy.”
Detail was everything.
Director/star Viggo Mortensen
“We even included accurate birdsongs, researched the proper flora. And even in post-production, we edited the sound for the right ambience. When you add sound, you might think, ‘Oh that’s a great Eagle sound,’ for instance. But then when you look it up, it’s an African Eagle. Nobody will notice, but the more effort you put in to be consistent, it matters.”
This speaks to the craftsmanship of the film, and to the level of care that went into its creation. But the details are also a framework for the human drama that unfolds. The accuracy of the film gives us a better picture of the historical context and helps us to understand the motivations of people from that time and why they made the choices they did. That comes out in the casting.
“It certainly mattered when it came to Vivienne. She’s the lead in our story. I wanted someone who I would believe was from that period. And when I first saw Vicky Krieps in Phantom Thread, I thought – wow, she has incredible screen presence, I think that very much like Meryl Streep. She could fit into almost any period.
“She has an interior force. She transmits so much that, even in silence, she would be right for the part. When she said yes to the role, we knew we could make a classic Western with a strong, ordinary woman at the centre of the story. The same goes for Danny Huston. The way he speaks, presence, body language – he was perfect.”
Mortensen drew from personal experience and the images he conjures as an artist as he talked about various story influences on The Dead Don’t Hurt.
“I started out writing a story about a woman. The first image that came to me was her as a little girl, running around in the forest, very much like the forest where my mom grew up near the Canadian border (Mortensen’s father was Danish, but his mother grew up in Watertown, N.Y.).
“We found a place in Ontario, across the border that looked like that place. My mother was the inspiration for the character of Vivienne, a woman who is strong-willed, knows herself, and stubbornly independent.
“I thought it would be interesting to place her in a place on the frontier – lawless and dominated by a few powerful and corrupt men who are not averse to using violence to achieve their goals. Like many kids of my generation, I grew up watching westerns on TV and in movie theatres, and I grew up riding horses. I like the genre and it would be interesting to research all the details.”
Focusing on a female character, celebrating her strength and ability to endure the pressures of a lawless western town is an unconventional theme for a story set in a Western genre. We mention it was a wonderful tribute to Viggo’s mother that she was the inspiration for Vivienne.
“Thank you. I wish she was alive to see it. I think she would have loved Vivienne, like all of us who made the movie. She would have liked the film a lot.”
Some might be surprised at Mortensen’s skillset, particularly if they only know him as Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings movies (if not for his scores of other roles, including the Oscar nominated leads in Green Book, Eastern Promises, and Captain Fantastic). In The Dead Don’t Hurt, Mortensen doesn’t just write and star. His other hats include producer, director and even composer. We asked him to talk a little about that.
“I asked myself: what music did people listen to in towns and cities at that time? What was popular and what played in small saloons in the West? There’s some music from the period – the classic music of the time, cello, violin, that you hear in San Francisco. Then there’s the saloon music in the town. The soundtrack is original, but I wanted it to be authentic as well to complement the visuals and the screenplay.”
Was there a challenge to wearing so many hats in this production?
“Well, not really. It’s about measuring when and how to do things. I composed the music before shooting, so we had that as a guide to know the rhythm and tempo of certain scenes. We knew how long they had to be.
“Then, you know, we worked really hard on the screenplay and we had a good team who were all on the same page. We did extensive preparation as a team to get all the details right. The more you prepare, the less you have to worry about. You’re always going to have problems every day – that’s just a part of making movies. But if you’re really well prepared, and the team in in synch, then obstacles are surmounted and problems are solved without stress. Our film looks like we shot it longer than we actually did and it was shot under budget.”
Talking with Viggo gave us a deeper level of understanding of how much care went into presenting those details. Historically accurate, it could serve as an instructional film in understanding the daily challenges facing the likes of Holger on the Western frontiers of late 19th Century America.
“Originally, Holger was to be played by another actor. In the end, his schedule just didn’t work out. I offered to play the role but it had to be vetted by the financiers and it had to be run past Vicky. Fortunately, she liked the idea.
“I had to change the character somewhat. So, we made him an older man – an immigrant. He was Danish and could have served in the Three Years War. I knew the language and I could speak like him in the way a Danish immigrant could for the time, with quirks that are particular to men from that part of Europe. It created a different dynamic in terms of the relationship with Vivienne and to the boy.
“But it was something different. It’s about when you come up against an obstacle and have a problem. You ask yourself, ‘What’s the best thing to do?’ instead of kicking yourself and saying, ‘What do we do now?’ You try to make friends with the obstacle.”