Years ago, one of my writing teachers taught me the difference between popular fiction and literary fiction. In popular fiction, we know what to expect, and we get exactly that. The main characters face obstacles, conflict, danger—and they overcome all of it in the end, and achieve their goals, more or less. Bad people are defeated, good are rewarded. It’s popular because that’s what we wish life was like, and it’s pleasant to watch it happen. In literary fiction, on the other hand, we don’t know what to expect. The characters are complicated, not good or bad, and things don’t necessarily turn out the way we’d like. It’s more meaningful because it honestly explores the way things are, instead of how we wish they were. But artists sometimes mix these two types together—giving us out of the ordinary outcomes within familiar genres. And this is the case with Viggo Mortensen, who has written, directed and scored a western called The Dead Don’t Hurt.
From the beginning of the movie, we’re shifting back and forth between different periods of time. A woman, played by Vicky Krieps, is on her death bed, taking her last breath, as her husband, played by Mortensen, looks on in quiet agony. In the next scene, in a 19th century Southwestern town, loud shots are heard in a saloon, and a well-dressed gunman comes out of the door and shoots some more people in the street, then rides away. Cut to Mortensen’s character, Holger Olsen, burying his wife, his little son watching. A group of men approach, among them the town’s mayor. Turns out that Olsen is the sheriff, the mayor is telling him about the shooting, and they’ve caught the culprit. Immediately we see the trial, but the man being condemned is not the well-dressed gunman we’ve seen committing the crime, but some poor half-wit. Some people in the courthouse protest that the real killer is the son of a wealthy local rancher, but the jury condemns the fool anyway. The sheriff observes all this, and proceeds, without explanation, to turn in his badge to the mayor and leave.
Here we expect the story to be about a quest for justice, or revenge, but instead the film is about Vicky Krieps’ character, a French pioneer woman named Vivienne. It takes some alertness on our part to notice when we’re in a flashback, because the movie doesn’t alert us to these time shifts. We’re just there suddenly, in Vivienne’s childhood in the forests of Canada, with a father who dies fighting the English. Her mother reads to her about Joan of Arc, and in a repeated vision we see the girl encountering a knight in armor in the woods. Later we see her as a young woman in San Francisco, annoyed by an unwanted suitor, then meeting Olsen, a Danish immigrant and carpenter, eventually falling in love with him. We also flash forward, from time to time, to Olsen’s journey on horseback with his little boy, leaving the town behind after burying his wife.
Vivienne is a woman of indomitable will and determination who refuses to conform, and Olsen is her imperfect match. The movie affectingly defies everything we’ve come to expect from the western genre. The gunman, played by Solly McLeod, emerges as a threat to Vivienne, but we don’t get the old revenge plot—instead it’s a film about two people loving each other in the face of great sorrow, and the self-respect that transcends misfortune. Krieps is magnificent in the lead. The Dead Don’t Hurt eventually realizes the deeper truth behind its title. Watch it, and give it time to sink in.
