The Dead Don't Hurt

 Director/Writer/Actor Viggo Mortensen's The Dead Don't Hurt offers audiences a refreshing oater that celebrates female resilience and immigrant indispensability.

Set in the Nevada territory around the time of the Civil War, the film stars Mortensen, who also wrote the terrific screenplay, as Olsen, a Danish immigrant to America, who meets in a San Francisco market the fiery French-Canadian Vivienne (Vicky Krieps of Phantom Thread), who had until then been courted by a tiresome dandy with whom she's grown bored.

Fiercely independent, Vivienne has sworn to never marry as she would never be anyone's possession. Even when Olsen tells her she is his "ocean," Vivienne responds with "Who can own the ocean?" It's a poetic and touching scene, one that, nonetheless, foreshadows dark turns.

When Olsen signs up to join the Union Army to "fight against slavery," Vivienne scolds him. "This is not your fight! This is not your country!" And he says quickly, "It is now!" And after a tearful goodbye, he's off.

Most of the middle section of the film is about Vivienne making her way alone -- as she has since her parents' deaths -- but now she must navigate the unwanted attention of local sadist, Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod), the son of a tyrannical businessman Alfred (Garret Dillahunt). Her refusal to respond to Weston leads to a brutal encounter, after which she is tempted to leave but doesn't.

When Olsen returns after many years away, Vivienne, relieved but also hesitate as she is now the mother of a young son, asks, "How was your war?" Olsen says, "Long. Not what I had expected. How was yours?" The question resonates with audiences because her battles have been many and not all of her skirmishes successful, as is apparent.

How Olsen and Vivienne go on to build a life from both scraps and whole cloth is the text of the final act, which offers some satisfying resolution and reason for optimism as suggested by the endless possibilities of the ocean's shore.

Highly recommended.