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‘The Dead Don’t Hurt’ Review: Viggo Mortensen Disappears From His Own Western for a Spell, Letting Vicky Krieps Lead
Viggo Mortensen's understated second feature, 'The Dead Don't Hurt,' takes a female perspective, pushing back on the violent tropes of studio Westerns.
Set during the Civil War but made with a mindset more in line with the #MeToo era, Mortensen’s sensitive take on a traditionally violent genre opens with Vivienne’s dying vision of a knight in shining armor coming to rescue her. Films rarely frame that experience from the woman’s perspective, which makes Mortensen’s enlightened approach fairly refreshing, even if Vivienne’s independence manifests itself in a way that anyone can sense is bad news (and not just because we see a varmint shooting up the saloon and hightailing it out of town early on). After so many subtleties, it’s unfortunate that Mortensen relies on rape as a plot device, though Vivienne’s reaction reinforces the strength she finds in Holger’s absence: defiantly showing up at work the next day, raising the child that results from this violation.
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