The Dead Don’t Hurt is a handsome love story set in the American West, hampered by an unnecessarily complicated structure but bolstered by Vicky Krieps’ performance.
Director: Viggo Mortensen
Genre: Western
Run Time: 129′
US & Canada Release: July 16, 2024 for digital purchase; July 23 for digital rental
UK & Ireland Release: June 7, 2024 in cinemas
The Dead Don’t Hurt, the second feature directed by Viggo Mortensen, a handsome and sedate Western, comes from a long line of cinematic ancestors. The western has been there from the very beginning of cinema, from Edison’s 1894 shorts depicting the acts of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show to 1903’s The Great Train Robbery. The genre quickly defined itself by a concern with morally ambiguous protagonists, violence and the price of violence in civilization, masculinity, and the difference between reality and myth.
They are movies characterized by their relationship to the setting; with frequent long, deep shots of the character traveling through stunning desert vistas or lush mountain woods. As westerns are most easily identified through their setting, on a character and story level they have a malleability, an arena for the storyteller to dig into the psychology of the character and have that move the story forward.
With its lack of clear-cut heroes and villains, concern with the psychological effect of violence, and cynical look at society, is it any wonder that the Western enjoyed its highest level of popularity in the 1950s, after so many people returned from the tumult and trauma of the Second World War? The western fell out of favor towards the end of the 1960’s, with the occasional bright spots of Dances with Wolves (1990), Unforgiven (1992) and Deadwood (2004-2006), but the mythology and the iconography of the genre has never left the popular consciousness. In 2024 we are still telling stories about loners solving the problems of a small community and wrestling with the history and mythology of the United States.
The most remarkable aspect of The Dead Don’t Hurt is how old-fashioned it all feels. The film does not attempt to comment or subvert the tropes of the classic genre, but rests easily among them. It is a movie that, with only a few changes here and there, could have been released in 1945 with Gregory Peck and Barbara Stanwyck as protagonists. There’s something extremely admirable about its individuality, its lack of concern with following current fashion. The Dead Don’t Hurt is a movie that is wholly itself, and asks you to meet it on its terms, not the other way around.
The Dead Don’t Hurt begins with the death of Vivienne LeCoudy (Vicky Krieps, of Phantom Thread) a steely and determined French-Canadian woman. Told non-linearly, the movie proceeds to jump around LeCoudy’s life, from her childhood to her partner, the soft-spoken and loyal Holger Olsen (Mortensen) setting out to enact revenge for her death. The main thrust of the film is the dynamic between Vivienne and Holger, a mature romance between two adults, given a gentleness by the palpable chemistry between Krieps and Mortensen. Vivienne and Holger meet in San Francisco in the years leading to the Civil War and form an instant connection, moving to Holger’s cabin high in the Nevada mountains. Their plans to make a home are interrupted by the outbreak of war and Holger’s decision to join the Union army.
The nearby mining town is the archetypal Western environment, with ranchers, corrupt mayors, saloons and a main thoroughfare perfect for shoot-outs. The town is run by a local cattle baron, Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt, of Red Right Hand) and his brutish son Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod, of Jericho Ridge) who spends his time raising hell at the saloon. It is at this saloon that Vivienne finds work as a barmaid, bringing her into close, dangerous contact with Weston. Tragedy strikes when she turns down his advances.
As Vivienne, Krieps commands the screen and is consistently the most interesting thing in the frame. The Dead Don’t Hurt is her movie. Krieps pulls the audience into her orbit with the strength of a moon, making every little gesture and lilt of her voice rich with meaning, and imbuing Vivienne with dignity, intelligence and strength. For fans of Krieps, The Dead Don’t Hurt is not a movie to miss.
The rest of the film, unfortunately, does not live up to Krieps’ presence. The nonlinear story structure, rather than illuminating and deepening the story, only serves to detract from the emotional beats and makes things unnecessarily complicated. The emotional register that Mortensen tries to create is further hampered through tinny, mawkish dialogue. If Krieps and Mortensen were both not such honest, straightforward performers, The Dead Don’t Die would have collapsed into a heap of melodrama.
As a director, Mortensen displays a good eye for setting, and blocking the actors so that they feel a part of their surroundings. The cinematography is formal and painterly, and instills in the audience a sense of the world that the characters inhabit, from the cabins to the saloon to the mountains. Perhaps appropriately for an actor such as Mortensen, he is able to get very comfortable and lived-in performances from his actors.
The pacing of The Dead Don’t Hurt is deliberate: It doesn’t hurry the audience from a shoot-out to a hanging to another shoot-out, but it allows time to listen to a saloon piano being played or take in the sight of a sunrise coming over a ravine. The American West was not John Wayne or a weathered photograph or a tourist trap reenactment. It was a place populated by flesh-and-blood people with many of the same complications, hopes, passions and dreams as the people of today. Vicky Krieps’ performance helps to convey that, creating an entire world, and an entire movie, inside of it.
The Dead Don’t Hurt is out now on all major platforms in the U.S. and Canada for Digital Purchase and will be available to stream on Digital Rental from July 23, 2024.
Loud and Clear Reviews has an affiliate partnership with Apple, so we receive a share of the revenue from your purchase or streaming of the films when you click on the button on this page. This won’t affect how much you pay for them and helps us keep the site free for everyone.
