The Big Picture

Viggo Mortensen and Vicky Krieps discuss their collaborative chemistry and eagerness to work together on Mortensen’s second directorial project, The Dead Don’t Hurt at the Toronto International Film Festival. Set in the 1860s American West, the film tells the story of immigrants Vivienne Le Coudy (Krieps) and Holger Olsen (Mortensen) as they navigate a corrupt town while Olsen goes off to fight in the Civil War. The film explores complex themes of femininity and masculinity, unconventional and nonlinear storytelling, and the Western genre as a backdrop for a love story centered around a strong female character.

Academy Award-nominee Viggo Mortensen returns to the Toronto International Film Festival for his second feature, The Dead Don’t Hurt, as writer-director since Falling in 2020. While promoting the film with co-star and lead Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread), the two sat down with Editor-in-chief Steve Weintraub at Collider’s TIFF media studio at the Cinema Center at MARBL to explore the writing process and the duo’s collaborative chemistry on set.

Set against the harsh backdrop of the American West in the 1860s, Mortensen’s sophomore film brews just on the precipice of the Civil War. Told out of chronological order, The Dead Don’t Hurt introduces us to the ruthlessness of the world around immigrants Vivienne Le Coudy (Krieps) and Holger Olsen (Mortensen), who set out to make a home for themselves on the wilderness of Nevada before Olsen leaves to fight for the Union. Left alone, Vivienne must fight to survive and stake her claim in a town controlled by corruption. Mortensen and Krieps are joined by Solly McLeod (Jericho Ridge), Danny Huston (Children of Men), and Garret Dillahunt (12 Years a Slave).

At Collider’s studio, Mortensen and Krieps discuss their eagerness to work together, why Krieps was the right actress to bring Vivienne’s spirit to screen, and how they found tension and unique moments in the script. Mortensen also talks about exploring the Western genre, the unconventional and nonlinear storytelling he favors for his films, and experimenting with complex themes and the feminine versus masculine. Check out all of this and more in the video above, or you can read the full transcript below.

Image via Photagonist at the at Collider TIFF Media Studio

COLLIDER: Viggo, this is your second feature, and it’s such a different kind of movie than your first film. There’s going to be a ton of people watching this that won’t know much about it. How have you been describing it to friends and family?

VIGGO MORTENSEN: I don’t know if I have been. I just told another story, and I hope you will want to see it. If I had to describe it, it’s a story about a woman, essentially, but it’s a love story centered around the female character. It’s in the Western genre. Western movies are usually about taming the frontier or expanding the frontier of the nation or establishing what the frontiers are, and I thought that would be a perfect setting in which to tell a story that’s essentially about a woman who is creating new frontiers just by being herself.

Image via TIFF

Vicky, this had to have been a fantastic script when you read it because your character is so three-dimensional and goes through so much, and is funny and adventurous. Talk a little bit about what it was like reading the script, and was it an immediate yes?

VICKY KRIEPS: Yes. [Laughs] It was a yes before, even. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true – I was in the desert of Arizona thinking, suddenly, “Okay, if there’s anything I’d like to do, it would be a Western,” and I saw myself on a horse. The same week, I get an email from my French agent that Mr. Viggo Mortenson would like to talk to me, which was already cool, but I didn’t know what for. Then it was the script, and it was a Western, which was crazy because just before I had thought about that.

Then I read the script, and as you say, that was easy to say yes because it was a very complex story of a woman. It was full of themes and these sujettes, topics, that I, as a woman, want to talk about that I think are important to talk about. I thought it was an interesting setting in the Western society, which seems to me like the most basic construction of society that we still have. We are still constructing society in the same way, but that’s when they started inventing it in a way, you know? “Oh, we need someone to have this little shop,” and then one does their thing, and the roles were given to people, and the role of the woman. So I thought that would be an interesting setting for it.

One of the things that I enjoyed the most about the film was just the relationship between the two of you and the sparse yet funny and unusual dialogue. How much was that in your script, and how much was that found on set?

MORTENSEN: Well, it was in there. It wasn’t like we were improvising the script. We stuck to the script, but it’s one thing to write something and have a certain idea of where it can go. You hope maybe there’ll be some lightness sometimes, but it’s not until someone is actually playing, say, the role of Vivienne where you see the possibilities. I mean, the character of Vivienne, I thought, this is a woman who, yes, she’s vulnerable, but she’s also very strong, sometimes stubborn, very much her own person, not someone who’s particularly vain, who just sees a way she wants to be or something she wants to do and she just does it regardless of what the constraints are. I needed someone ideally who was as potentially unconventional and brave as the character, and I couldn’t imagine anybody better than Vicky, so I was hoping that you would want to do it.

KRIEPS: And then you were in trouble. [Laughs]

MORTENSEN: No, no, no. I mean, I knew that if you said yes, I had a feeling that would also be trouble, but trouble is good for this kind of work. And sometimes people like to put things in a category, “Okay, it’s a feminist Western.” I never said that, but the idea of feminine/masculine is a complex thing, more and more so these days. People talk about it more openly, but, you know, sometimes a man can be very feminine and a woman can be more masculine in their approach to a certain problem or a discussion, and you see that in our characters. They fluctuate. Even after their first night together, she’s like, “Wow, that was fun, but now, in the light of day, he seems like an idiot.” So one of the first questions she says is, “So when are you leaving?” [Laughs] And he’s says, “Well, I’m leaving,” and he smiles, and she thinks, “Oh, maybe he does have some balls. Okay. Maybe it’s interesting. Maybe I can get to know him a little bit more before I completely kick him out,” you know? So I like this back and forth. Sometimes, one is stronger than the other, and there is a kind of a tug-of-war.

Image via TIFF

One of the things that I also enjoyed was the nonlinear structure of the film. Was that always in the script? When you were in the editing room, did you try a version where it wasn’t as nonlinear? Sometimes, you can write it and it might not work.

MORTENSEN: Well, it’s a challenge when you write it that way. I mean, I did that with the first movie I directed, also. In a sense, they’re both more like novels in a way. There are benefits to that potentially where, for example, in The Dead Don’t Hurt, there are characters that you see at the beginning die, but then you get to see them in past scenes as it goes along, whether it’s Wilkins [Alex Breaux] or whether it’s Kendall [W. Earl Brown]. You get to know them, and you think, “Oh wow.” Or an advantage is, for example, there’s a scene—I don’t think this gives away too much—where Weston, played by Solly McLeod, who’s our villain, who’s really great, he comes to pay her a visit on a beautiful Sunday morning, and she’s in the garden working. He’s coming, very polite and gentlemanly, and she has an instinct. She sees him coming, and there’s a look on her face that’s really great, you can’t explain how that’s acted, and there’s just a feeling something’s off. Then he’s kind of charming, but the audience already knows that he’s not a good guy, and they’re thinking, “No, no, no, no, don’t talk to him.” She’s alone with this guy. So, there’s an advantage to that kind of structure.

And like you say, when you get in the editing room, sometimes it’s like, “Wow, that’s a mess. I don’t know.” I did think about it. At one point I was struggling with especially the first third of the movie because that’s crucial to establishing who she is and where she comes from. “How do we do that? I don’t know if it’s gonna work as scripted or not.” And I tried different things. I even thought about linear, and actually, we did a rough of linear, and I didn’t like it. So I went back to it, and it was just a question of finding the rhythm. It’s kind of like music. Before I started directing, I had more experience with music for years, editing it, and I realized, even on the first movie I directed, it’s not very different. Editing music, it’s about finding the right rhythm. “Okay, that’s too many notes. Take that one away. Now it goes. That’s the transition, boom, boom, boom, boom, the beat is that.” And that’s the way I found editing images was very similar, and actors. There’s a rhythm. There’s a rhythm that they’re telling you and you have to find that. And in both cases, I composed most of the score before we started shooting, and so the music dictated, in many cases, how the scenes were shot, how many shots, and how we approached it.

What surprised you about working with Viggo as a director, and what was he like when he was not getting exactly what he was looking for you looking for?

MORTENSEN: A pain in the ass.

KRIEPS: I know what you are looking for. You are looking for the story, “We had so much trouble, and we were fighting! I hate him!”

Image via TIFF

[Laughs] No, I’m not looking for that, but I’m curious what he’s like.

KRIEPS: I know, but that is very interesting, and yes, you are right. It was like working with someone who’s somehow very close to maybe the core of my being or maybe there’s some spirituality or like a soft side for nature that we share that I always maybe felt. I didn’t know you, but I knew your work, and you can tell that through your work. But at the same time, of course, it’s someone who’s completely opposite. So, yes, it was not only easy, and it was not only, “Oh, yes, I know exactly what you want. I’m going to do that.” There was a lot of me maybe not doing what you want. Also, often I was consciously trying to…almost like I would sneak something behind his back, but playfully, you know? Like waiting for him to notice and then go like, “Okay, is he going to be angry, or is he going to laugh about it?” The way you’re playing with someone because, to me, acting is playing.

It’s one thing to be a “good actor” and know your lines and be perfect and be correct, but then what? I mean, I don’t say that’s bad, just I find it boring. So, what I always look for is something real. So what I would like to do is, you know, when he came back from war, the way it was written, it didn’t tell you how it should be made, but you naturally think she will be happy that he’s back. We did the scene the first time, and I remember you could hear a pin drop because every one of the crew was like, “What’s happening? Why is she not happy?” And then it made sense to everyone.

MORTENSEN: It was perfect.

KRIEPS: It makes complete sense, and then the whole scene came from there, them just being completely silent because they don’t know what to say, they haven’t spoken, he hasn’t spoken, probably…

MORTENSEN: No, your instincts were great, and the way you were with the boy, everything. That helped me, acting in the scene, to react to you and this boy. You want actors, crew members, too, to come with surprises, something more. Because if it’s just your blueprint and just what you have in your mind, you’re just one person; it’s a collective art form. When people come with something that challenges you, even if it annoys you, sometimes you’re like, “What the hell is that? Why is she doing that?” Then you stop and think, and it’s like, “Actually, that’s pretty interesting. If she does that, that means that this happens. Yeah, why not?” So if you’re open, you get many gifts. If you’re closed, it’s all annoying.

Image via TIFF

I actually thought that sequence played very real and authentic, specifically because of everything that the characters have been through. I thought it was a very well-done scene.

KRIEPS: Well, if I may say, it’s like dancing, I think, a lot in acting. And the best dance partner is someone who can hold against you, who you can lean onto, or you can pull like it was equally strong. And I think if it’s annoying what I do, that’s also a great thing because then it even becomes something, you can feel something. It becomes something you can push against.

MORTENSEN: Tension. Also, because it’s in that time, and that’s something that people would have no idea about, I mean, I still send postcards and letters, and people don’t do that much anymore. It’s like people using, what, the telegraph or something, but I like the physical writing and the receiving, the miracle of, “Will this postcard get to…?”

KRIEPS: By the way, thank you for the postcard, the last one. I got it!

MORTENSEN: Oh, you’re welcome! [Laughs] But what they’re talking about now, you realize it’s not just– People freak out if you don’t do a like or respond to the email within an hour or two or that day, but here are people who have been apart for a few years, and it’s like, “Did you get my letters?” “I got seven. The last one got wet, so I couldn’t read it because the ink ran.” That’s that reality then that people would have a hard time imagining now, and just a few lines paint a whole image of what that existence was like.

I like when you give a hint of something, whether it’s the actor does it or the writing does it, and you trust the audience to put the rest together and that they can participate in the storytelling. I thought about this last night again when we showed the movie and then afterwards when people are talking to us about what they felt, what they saw. Once you’ve shown it, it’s not your movie anymore; it’s their movie, and they decide what it’s about. Especially if you leave gaps and you have a challenging structure, they build, they know what your past is for themselves in a different way than we could imagine sometimes, and I think that’s great.

I also appreciated that it was an unconventional Western because I’ve seen so many Westerns, and I love movies where I don’t know where it’s all gonna go, you know what I mean? The nonlinear structure and the fact that it’s not about– Anyway, I really enjoyed it.

MORTENSEN: It’s not about a guy going to war, it’s about the person who doesn’t go to war and what happens there. That’s not what you usually see.

Image via TIFF

When you started writing the script to what people see on screen, how much is it what you originally imagined? How much did you find in the writing along the way that became the movie, and how much were you thinking about, “This is where I wanna go?”

MORTENSEN: If you allow it, it’s always writing as you go along. You have the idea, you write it, you rewrite it; someone reads it, they react to it, they say, “I’ll do it,” and then you start thinking of it in a new way. Then you start to see them doing it and other people doing it. Then the cinematographer comes in with his point of view, and the costume designer and the production, etcetera, etcetera, the climate…

KRIEPS: In this case, the cinematographer [Marcel Zyskind] almost defines the writing, you know? I saw that yesterday. The way he films me in certain moments and chooses what to see and how not to, it’s almost like he’s looking after Vivienne. It’s like the camera cares for Vivienne, looks after Vivienne, and tries to protect her.

MORTENSEN: And this continues in the editing. You keep writing, and you keep finding ways, whether it’s the structure or which shots to show of Vivienne. For example, how she reacts – do we see her, or do we just hear her react sometimes?

The Dead Don’t Hurt had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.