Our take
Written, directed, and scored by Viggo Mortensen, The Dead Don’t Hurt is a visually stunning, emotionally potent, but still impressively restrained period drama that flips the script on typical Westerns. On the surface, it looks like it could be one—there’s even a bad guy clad in black who slings guns outside a saloon—but the film decidedly focuses on Vivienne and her everyday life. Viewers might think nothing is happening, but in fact, everything is happening, such is Mortensen’s framing of the value of these overlooked aspects of life. Immigrants, too, who are usually just extras in Westerns populate this movie and make it their own—as they should. They’re the backbone of America after all, and yet they’re usually relegated to the background in period dramas. The icing on the cake is that the film is breathtakingly beautiful, each frame a transportive picture of 19th-century America.
Synopsis
In the 1860s, fiercely independent French-Canadian Vivienne Le Coudy embarks on a journey with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen, attempting to forge a life together in the dusty town of Elk Flats, Nevada. When Holger decides to go fight for the Union in the burgeoning Civil War, Vivienne must fend for herself, which isn't easy in a town controlled by a corrupt mayor.
Storyline
Taking place before, during, and shortly after the Civil War, the film follows Vivienne (Vicky Krieps) and Holger (Viggo Mortensen), immigrants who fall in love and settle in a small but corrupt Californian town.
TLDR
One of the most beautiful Westerns in cinema is one that redirects its gaze from typical bloodbaths to everyday occurrences.
What stands out
Three things: the fact that Mortensen did everything in this film; the mesmerizing nonlinearity of the storytelling; and Vicky Krieps.