As the American Civil War rages on, even those far removed from the center of the conflict are called into battle.  Holger Olsen (Viggo Mortensen), a Danish immigrant and former solider, enlists in the Union Army leaving his new wife, Vivienne Le Coudy (Vicky Krieps), herself a French immigrant, alone at the budding homestead, nestled in the quiet Nevada cliffs.  While he is away, Vivienne gets a job at the local bar run by Alan Kendall (W. Earl Brown), but she runs afoul of Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod), the brash son of Alfred (Garret Dillahunt), the leader of the Jeffries’ Gang, who makes her life difficult in her husband’s absence; but Vivienne will not go down without a fight. 

The Dead Don’t Hurt is written and directed by Viggo Mortensen, in addition to starring in it; though it is Krieps’ Vivienne who has the firmest grip on the reigns of this Western romantic drama.  Premiering at the 2023 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, the 129-minute period piece was picked up for US distribution by Shout! Studios.  Featuring a flowing score also by Viggo Mortensen and painterly cinematography from Marcel Zyskind, The Dead Don’t Hurt may seem a little softer in touch than the Technicolor Westerns of old, but it deals with many of the same themes and tropes making for a thrilling and powerful emotional epic in its own right and adheres to the same tenants of those expansion and homesteading adventures we know and love. 

The story follows a nonlinear path split into two parts; before and after Vivienne’s death and at times dipping even further back to her childhood.  There are no chapter markers or intertitles so it flows like a stream of consciousness accounting for Holger and Vivienne’s relationship.  There is also no voiceover to keep audiences on track, and because both parties at times take control of the narrative, finding that singular voice is difficult and can be alienating, but Mortensen rewards the careful viewer with a towering drama in the same emotional space as Derek Cianfrance’s sea-side set romance, The Light Between Oceans (2016), swapping out the cliffside coastline for the dusty flats, but similarly shows the struggles of a pure relationship in a near-inhospitable environment.  It is the chemistry between Mortensen and Krieps that elevates the film and it feels like they are working in the tradition of Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann in Jan Troell’s sweeping new world epic, The Emigrants (1971) and The New Land (1972).  Because their love operates in the stratosphere of any fairy tale romance, but forced to survive back here on Earth, that disparity fuels a sense of passion that is unmatched in some of the more storybook-minded tales of desire where happy endings are almost inevitable, but Mortensen’s film, even during its most indulgent whims, does not blunt the harsh landscape of which it is set. 

Looking first at Mortensen’s Holger, we are introduced to him at a point of crisis.  As the sheriff, he was called into town to investigate a massacre at Kendall’s saloon, and upon returning home he discovers that Vivienne has at long last passed to disease.  When the wrong man is sentenced for the crime in a botched hanging, Holger, disgusted and without an anchor, turns in his badge as this is a land without law and without love, not fit to raise his son, Vincent (Atlas Green).  In a more traditional Western, that would have been the entire film, but this is all delivered in the opening ten or so minutes.  Holger is a very gentle soul, though notably, that is not to be confused with being weak, or meek.  He is hardened by his environment, but he is not looking for a fight, or for riches, or to expand as drives many of our Western heroes.  It is not that we are not used to seeing family men in our dusty adventures, but to see one so reserved who is not following in the footsteps of a man with no name vigilantism and rather follows an actual moral compass is a refreshing take.  A diminutive read would be that Holger was ripped from the pages of an idealized Western, dime store romance novel, but really The Dead Don’t Hurt is valorizing the friendly neighbor of the more shoot ‘em up stories, but unlike those ancillary characters, he does not need some John Wayne figure to come in and save him with a flurry of gunfire. 

He does, however, need Vivienne.  It would be incorrect to say that Vivienne needs Holger, but she certainly does not want to live without him. She is independent and driven, but not in the low-hanging, gun-toting, corporate girlboss way that so many revisionist titles often adhere to. Because The Dead Don’t Hurt is populated by the secondary and tertiary characters of the Westerns we know and love, Mortensen is able to craft a character for Krieps that allows her to be the runaway star of the film with much of the narrative circling her story in Holger’s absence.  If Holger was a softer hero than we are used to, the rest of the town – specifically the Jefferies Gang – are as rough and tumble as they come, but The Dead Don’t Hurt shows us a story of dusty compassion and resilience. Krieps enters the scene with a flash of color, livening up Holger’s drab life be by it the color of her flowers, the lacy bonnet and hoop skirt she wears to the fish market, or even just straightening up the humble home, she unlocks a desire for a shared experience that Holger had never seemed drawn to in the past. Despite her feminine airs, she is not one to lay down and submit and for her independence, she is sorely punished by the scorned men of Elk Flats; again, specifically, the Jefferies Gang. The film follows her crucible and Mortensen, at the typewriter, tries to break Vivienne but she refuses to yield. Krieps plays the woman as stoic as they come, but she imbues the performance with such emotion, as well, that it is not rigid, but commanding. 

With Holger at war, Weston makes his move on Vivenne, assaulting the woman in her home one evening. As the narrative wanes on, there is the unspoken question coursing through town when Vivenne begins to show signs of pregnancy, and even after the boy – Vincent, named after her father – is born, the town’s folk look at her with a suspicious eye. From the omnipresent advantage of the auditorium, we know the truth of the situation, but because Mortensen employs such a fractured storytelling style here, we are able to experience the events in tandem with the characters. We may know something they do not, but at each transition in time, they know something we are not yet privy to about these characters, as well, so we are all on equal ground. Impressively, we end the film with full knowledge of the tragedy that transpired, but we are never subject to an onslaught of exposition. Mortensen expertly weaves everything we need into his screenplay so that over the course of the film’s runtime, it all comes into focus; a beautiful watercolor that feels at first like a romanticized account of the West, but like a rose, its thorns are still there, just underneath. 

The Dead Don’t Hurt is a demanding yet simple story that does not overcomplicate itself in its plotting despite its fractured structure. Mortensen is simply asking his audience to pay attention as the timeline oscillates back and forth even all the way back to when Vivienne was a little girl (Eliana Michaud). He is not playing any tricks, or trying to get a fast one by us, but he is instead delivering to us the story of a life as it could be delivered in the communal stream-of-consciousness memories given by attendees of a funeral. It all comes together to form a whole as one memory leads into the next and recalls a story from before that informs an anecdote closer to the present. Our understanding of the film grows when, like in real life, we realize that the people we see on the street have their own arcs, their own motives, desires, and fears, and that maybe we are not the only ones leading a narrative.