Viggo Mortensen Talks Respecting Audiences and the Importance of ‘Unless I’m Broke’ Storylines, New ‘LOTR’ Movies

Viggo Mortensen seems tireless. On Friday evening, he opened the 58th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) in the Czech Republic with his feminist western The dead don’t hurt after receiving the festival’s President’s Award. On Saturday, he spoke about the film at a press conference and presented another screening in the Czech spa town. On Sunday, Mortensen met the press for roundtable interviews.

Accepting his KVIFF award, Mortensen said, “All films are difficult to make. But I was fortunate to have a great group of actors” to The dead do no harm. He particularly praised stars Vicky Krieps, who plays Vivienne, a strong woman who falls in love with Mortensen’s Olsen, who leaves her behind for a while to join a war, and Solly McLeod, who plays antagonist Weston Jeffries.

In an interview on Sunday, the star spoke about his inspirations behind the film, feminism and how he didn’t set out to make a film with a political message, how Westerns have sometimes promoted a certain “mythology” of the United States, why he screened Dead people don’t hurt in Ukraine and those planned for new ones the Lord of the Rings movies.

Read excerpts from the interview below.

The dead do no harm shows the cultural diversity of life in the Old West. Your character is of Danish origin, Vivienne is French-Canadian. I don’t remember other westerns showing this diversity.

There are Westerns where you see characters like that, and they’re usually clichés, or bad guys, or they’re just secondary characters, very secondary characters – a Chinese guy, an Irish guy, or a Native American guy. That’s true. The leads, the main characters are almost always born in the United States or Canada. Maybe they could be English, but they speak English as a first language. And they’re usually white. To have a woman as the main character in a Western is unusual. There have been women, whether it’s Barbara Stanwyck, Claudia Cardinale, or Marlene Dietrich, but they’ve played remarkable characters. They’re usually extraordinary women. They’re very rich; they’re so beautiful that you’re amazed; they’re special. To have an ordinary woman like Vivienne as the main character is unusual. And to stay with her when a man goes to war is totally unusual.

The dead don’t hurt has been described as a feminist western. What is your attitude towards feminism in general?

For this film, I did questions and answers with journalists, but also with the public. I believe there are almost 80 around the world. People have a lot of different things to say, especially about feminism. I didn’t intend to make a film from a political, ideological or other point of view. I just wanted to tell a good story about a strong, independent woman (Vivienne, played by Vicky Krieps). I’m sure there were many women like Vivienne in those days, maybe most. It’s just that their stories hadn’t been told. Journalists or novelists were not interested in these stories. They were interested in battles against indigenous people or the coming of the railroad, or outlaws and sheriffs and cattle ranchers fighting against sheepherders or things like that. The push west and settling in the country and promoting this mythology of the United States, you know, “God wanted them to go west, take all this.” » These are stories that seemed interesting to me, even when we started making westerns at the beginning of the 20th century. Until now, even female western directors haven’t really focused on a woman as a main character, unless she’s extraordinary – super powerful, or maybe some kind of vigilante who acts like a violent man, who has a gun and who shoots. This is somewhat exploitative for the sake of instant gratification. I just wanted to tell the story of an ordinary, relatively ordinary woman. I asked myself a question. What is she doing in this situation (in which she finds herself)?

At first, I didn’t know it was a Western. I thought of my mother and I knew where she grew up, near a forest. And I have books that she had when she was a child: these hardcover books with beautiful colored pictures on the cover of knights and things like Joan of Arc or fairy tales with lots of illustrations. She is very curious about other people and cultures and has an adventurous spirit that knows herself, what she wants, what she thinks. Even though she is a woman of her time, a mother of three children, a housewife, she has always been interested in films, books, languages ​​and everything. And I thought: “Imagine what she was like as a little girl, based on these books and the landscapes she grew up in.” And if she grows up to be a woman, Vivienne should be like that. That was really my inspiration, and everything else is obviously fiction.

You said this in your film Fall, you used a lot of references to your father. Do you feel the need to include personal things and stories in your films?

As an actor, I play a role or I tell a story, and I always do it from a personal point of view, like the audience when they see the film we made. He sees a different film from the one I see. I like to respect the public. I think sometimes directors, producers, studios, etc. don’t fully trust the audience. And the bigger the budget, the less risk they want to take. They want to make sure everyone understands and everyone goes to see it. So they explain things too much. I like to give just enough information, and then the audience can participate. If he likes what he’s seen enough in the first 10 or 15 minutes, he’s like, “What’s going on?” Okay, who is this? OK ? » And at the end, I like that we ask ourselves: “What are these people going to do now? » So it doesn’t really end, like life. These are the kinds of stories I love as an audience. So I made the kind of film I want to see.

Your acting work also continues after this film. Could we maybe see you in one of the new the Lord of the Rings movies?

I haven’t read a script. So I don’t know. The script is the most important thing to me, unless I’m broke, I have no money and I’m lucky to get a job. So it depends.

How often does this happen?

Lately I’ve been lucky and that hasn’t been the case for a while.

Deaths don’t hurt has been described as a dramatic romantic story set in dangerous times. But I also see it as a father-son road trip.

It’s also a father-daughter and mother-daughter story. You see the effect that it has on Vivienne when her father decides to go away. And what she thinks, as a little girl, is, “Wow, that’s cool. He’s going because he has moral reasons to do something.” And the daughter says, “Why does Mommy say he shouldn’t go? And then the father says, “I have to go because my friends are counting on me to go,” and the daughter says, “Yeah, that’s cool. I want to be like him.” But then you also see the relationship with the mother, and Vivienne remembers that relationship when the mother tries to answer some tough questions. “Why do people go to war? Do men do the same thing to women? And when the mother thinks she’s answered enough of the questions, well, she says, “Well, I want to fight like that.”

But that’s our most complicated thing. It’s not an unrealistic movie in the sense that she’s literally going to be Joan of Arc and take up arms and kill people. Psychologically, her journey is more complex, and she’s the strongest person psychologically in the movie. She’s stronger than (my character) Olsen. She’s stronger than Weston (played by Solly McLead). She’s stronger than Weston’s father (played by Garret Dillahunt), and everyone. But she’s limited by circumstances, physically, environmentally, everything. And that’s what I wanted to explore.

Why did you decide to filter The dead do no harm in Ukraine at the Mykolaichuk Open film festival?

I was invited and I thought it was going to be difficult to work around my schedule and I don’t know how I’m going to get to this place. And it was a bit complicated. There were several different planes to Romania, and I drive for six, seven hours. But we made it and I really knew it was the right thing when I was there. I really enjoyed being there. Because for them it was very immediate. In the audience there were people saying, “I’m alone, my husband died last month” or, “My husband, I don’t know when he’s coming back.” Or my boyfriend or my father or whatever. And, “I have a little Vincent (like Krieps’ character with his baby in the film). He doesn’t have a father now either. So it was very immediate.

And they talked about it in a different way. It wasn’t like, “Well, imagine if there was a war.” » It was like, “There is a war and we are in this situation. » And it’s the women mostly who stay, as always, when the men leave to do this – it’s mostly men, but the women are leaving now too. Historically, women ensure that the home stays together, keeps society together, feeds and educates children, etc., keeps society functioning, while men work to destroy each other mutually and destroy the landscape. In general, this has been the history of human beings. And so it was very immediate and it’s something different. I was very glad I went and I also thought there was this international film festival with films from the United States and different places in Europe and Asia, but no directors or actors was going there. I thought it would be good if they had a filmmaker there.