Mortensen writes, directs, stars in and composes music for the new film The Dead Don’t Hurt \u2013\u00a0which also stars Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps. <\/p>

Few genres are more closely associated with old-fashioned Hollywood filmmaking than the Western. It\u2019s a genre that was perfected by a number of Golden Age filmmakers from John Ford to Howard Hawks and gave us a huge variety of classic films characterised by sweeping vistas, enigmatic gunslingers and sheriffs both heroic and corrupt.<\/p>\n

For his new film The Dead Don\u2019t Hurt \u2013 which he wrote, directed, starred in and composed music for \u2013 Viggo Mortensen wanted to draw on some of these tropes while also putting a modern spin on a genre that\u2019s not anywhere near as popular as it was in its heyday.<\/p>\n

To go about doing this, he decided to tell a story that focused not on the groups of men that populated the American frontier but on a woman named Vivienne (played by Phantom Thread\u2019s Vicky Krieps) and the battles she faces in a violent world of corruption and greed \u2013 especially after the man she loves goes off to fight in the Civil War.<\/p>\n

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He continued: \u201cAnd it\u2019s the same for me as an adult. When I go to the movies, I want to go on a journey. And I want to really imagine what it would have been like to be there. So the way things look and sound, all of that is done that way. And the same with the music \u2013 it\u2019s original, but it feels like it could be from that period. So we\u2019re following the rules of a traditional Western in the way it looks and sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Krieps\u2019s part, she explained that she was \u201calready almost emotionally involved\u201d with the story before she\u2019d even read the script, owing to an experience she\u2019d had while walking in the desert and instantly feeling like her next project should be a Western.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen suddenly out of the blue, I was reading a Western script from Viggo,\u201d she said. \u201cThen I read it and I could really relate to the character. I felt that it would be a great opportunity to bring my modern understanding and I know I will always be honest, I will always try and find the truth in that story.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I thought that this is a film that needs this kind of truth. And maybe it\u2019s also a time where we need to see the truth for a woman in a harsh male environment in order to talk about humanity, in order for her to be human. It\u2019s a woman but it\u2019s actually just a person. She\u2019s just a person. And we\u2019re not used to seeing women in the western genre in the centre of attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Interestingly, the role of Vivienne\u2019s love interest Holger Olsen was not always going to be played by Mortensen himself. He had another actor lined up but then, just as they were heading into the final two months of pre-production in Mexico \u2013 where the film was shot \u2013 he received a message explaining that that actor was having to pull out.<\/p>\n
$\"Viggo$ \n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>