On the surface, The Dead Don’t Hurt, the second directorial venture from Viggo Mortensen (who also stars, writes, produces and composed the film’s elegantly pensive score), has the weathered, leathery look of a traditional Hollywood western. The story of a rocky romance between a spirited, rebellious woman and a strong, silent man, the film was shot, in imposing widescreen, largely on location in Durango, Mexico, a region that also provided the backdrop for numerous classics of the genre. John Sturges’s The Magnificent Seven, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly all made use of the wide open sky, sweeping vistas and photogenically phallic geological formations. There’s a rough-hewn drama to the look of the land, with jutting rocky outcrops contrasted against the squat, wind-blown vegetation of the scrubland. But scratch below the dust and the grit of what passes here for 1860s Nevada and Mortensen’s film reveals itself to be a quietly unconventional spin on this time-worn genre.
In a way, it’s a film that reflects the personality and creative approach of its director. Mortensen, after all, has a classic movie star bearing and bone structure that was put to striking effect as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. But his career choices subsequently have tended towards the intriguing and the offbeat – for every crowd-pleaser such as Green Book, there is a clutch of abrasive, challenging roles in pictures by film-makers such as David Cronenberg. It stands to reason that Mortensen’s interpretation of a western would venture somewhat off the beaten track.
