Os Mortos Não Matam

I always dream of a return of the great cowboy movie. Not that there haven't been honorable attempts - Lawrence Kasdan, Ron Howard, Tom Selleck. Now we have The DEAD DON'THURT. Hopes rise as we open with drunken psychopath Solly McLeod exiting the saloon, where he's shot four people, and taking down a wounded local and the agreeable boy deputy on his way. Star-director-writer-producer-musician Viggo Mortensen pulls his weight there, making McLeod the nastiest bad guy in memory. Frank Faylen, in WHISPERING SMITH, shooting people just to see them jump, seems neighborly by comparison.

Ah but there's more. The frontier proves to be in the hands of avaricious land grabbers with a side line in vice. The admirable Danny Huston's speech about expanding the one saloon to house "sporting ladies" sets the tone. There's Ray McKinnon's bought judge contrasted with the indignant girl who has to be silenced when she is the one person to stand and speak out in his court or the appalled town doctor who refuses to charge for his ominous visit. There is a complete world here, one that's subtly different from the ones we know from earlier films, more savage, more connected to the earth.

Mortenson is really good with performers. Putting him opposite now star of the moment Vicky Krieps makes this one compulsory viewing. We first see her bored with the well dressed suitor who will not stand for that, dismissing her as "not the freshest either." It sets her up nicely as the idealised frontier woman, a suitable mate to roll in manure with fellow European migrant, war veteran Mortenson.

The film is full of nice pieces of staging - Viggo initiating his courtship by offering Krieps a slice of salmon on the flat of his Bowie knife, the pair of them reaching the isolated house he has used his carpenter skills to build in what seems an inexplicable choice among all the empty Nevada land ("What do you do?" "As little as possible.") her dropping her two bags as she faces the horses she has loaded her chair onto, - even the lamp wick dimming after the assault. He manages the use of the convincing Heaven's Gate-like setting - boots ringing on the timber board walks, the shadow of the rain on window glass falling on faces or scenic panoramas like the striking (Mexican) rock outcrops that telegraph the fact that we are going to see bullets impacting them.

Viggo has kind of crept up on us, doing support parts in conspicuous movies for forty years until he became someone whose efforts automatically rated our attention. I hate to say that there's too much Viggo here but as a producer, he should have congratulated himself on his stringed instrument skills, gone off to one side and told himself director Viggo needs more editing discipline.

The DEAD DON'T HURT is plagued by unwelcome elaboration. Throwing the military medal off the cliff just doubles up on the lead's view of the Civil war, moving from "fighting against slavery" to "not what I expected." The whole flashback structure just makes it hard to follow and dissipates the action movie energy. The knight in armor is mystifying at first and dim when it's explained - the Indian girl with the fish? Joan of Arc?

Somewhere buried in the over-length The Dead DON'T HURT there is a superior, atmospheric example waiting to take its place in the new cycle of ultra sadistic westerns, along with The BONE TOMYHAWK or The HATEFUL EIGHT I kind of feel I was cheated out of it.

Beautiful story about the love of two outsiders in the countryside, where they just want to survive and build a home, and trying to keep the distance from the archetypical western "heroes". Wonderfully photographed tale, and Viggo Mortensen did his best as a director, actor, writer and composer. Sometimes, it's a bit too slow, otherwise, I appreciate that they didn't fill the story with common cowboy stuffs and self-serving violance - Mortensen's movie isn't about the danger and corruption of the west, but about independence and strong, unique connection between lovers. I really like the middle part, where the film switched to Vivienne's subjective perspective.

This movie is a great piece of art. It tells the story about 2 people trying to build their lives at the frontier. Sadly their dream get's interrupted when the civil war is starting. When Olsen (viggo mortensen) returns home from the war both start to realize that everything has changed. Everything in the movie felt natural and it was beautifully shot. If there would be a negative point for me then it would be that the first 30 minutes in the movie felt a bit confusing because there were some flash forwards and flash backs all in the mix. I give the movie an 8/10. I highly recommend this movie if you are a fan of the western genre.

What to expect when watching this movie: 1. A classic tale of revenge 2. Beautiful landscapes and nature.

3. A very intimate love story 4. All the ingredients of an good old fashioned western. (and yes a good shootout!)

The Dead Don't Hurt

Viggo Mortensen wrote and directed the Western, The Dead Don't Hurt, a story set at the onset of the Civil War. A Danish American meets a French (or Canadian, it's not really clear) American in the American frontier, and they fall for each other but choose not to marry.

Olsen's dream location is a barren piece of land that seems unsuitable for his partner, Vivienne. She makes the best of it by getting a job at the local saloon, and plants flowers and vegetables the best way she can. Olsen, however, feels this urge to go fight in the Civil War, leaving her by herself.

Like most stories of the American frontier, there was not a lot of lawful behavior. With Vivienne now alone, shenanigans ensue. In fact, we know most of the outcome during the opening scene, which I haven't decided was the right decision. But there is enough mystery that I stayed interested, though ultimately disappointed.

I had some trouble with the story as a whole. Showing patriotism for the new country that was still being settled is honorable. But abandoning a woman who begrudgingly decided to stay in a harsh environment was very pathetic. His selfishness sets forth a chain reaction that resulted in a very chaotic ending. Passion for what you love is one thing, but it's meaningless when it comes at the expense of who you love.

I'm also a bit tired of the lawlessness old West trope, even if it's an example of accuracy. Our cartoonish villain's (Weston) father is even afraid of him, along with pretty much the entire settlement. Come on, Viggo. The characterization was just sloppy, and Weston really was only there to give the most extreme of outcomes to Olsen's choice.

I disliked the very end, and I'll leave it up to my readers to see if they feel the same.

Despite the fact that the plot has plenty of holes, this western just about works. It's all about the determined "Vivienne" (Vicky Krieps), very much a woman in a man's world of pioneering in the 1860s. She encounters the honest and thoughtful "Olsen" (Viggo Mortensen) and travels to his remote, and rather ramshackle, shack where they begin to make an home for themselves. He takes a job as their sheriff and she, a little to his chagrin, starts working in the saloon. He is restless, though, and with the American civil war looming large, he decides that he ought to use his Danish army training and go enlist. She's not enamoured of the idea, but off he goes and that leaves her alone and firmly in the sights of spoilt local "Weston" (the rather un-menacing Solly McLeod). When "Olsen" returns from the war quite a few years later he is presented with a few shocks! Subsequent events take an even more tragic turn, and now he must face his demons and settle accounts. This is a grand looking romantic drama that takes it's time to get going and that allows Krieps to invest strongly in the maturing elements of her character. That he would just saunter off for years and leave her alone and unprotected does beggar belief a bit, and there's no denying that does negatively impact on the plausibility of what, rather obviously, comes next. Still, there is enough meat on the bones of the story, an effectively sparing amount of dialogue and a soupçon of chemistry between the two at the top of the cast that gives some indication of just how tough and lawless life was and at how difficult it was to be decent!