“The genre is more or less dead, except when a powerful director or star gets an urge to make a vanity Western.” - Scott Eyman (2014)
We've been starved of big screen Westerns in recent years. Most of the noteworthy genre titles that I've come across evaded cinemas, such as Walter Hill's Dead for a Dollar, which went straight to DVD in the U.K., and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs by the much vaunted Coen brothers was a Netflix release. It seems that non-Westerns that take on certain aspects of the genre, such as The Power of the Dog, Cry Macho and Killers of the Flower Moon are more likely to find acceptance by critics and filmgoers. It therefore feels like something of a minor miracle that in June 2024 we have two unabashed oaters going on wide release. Viggo Mortensen's sophomore directorial outing The Dead Don't Hurt premiered at the Toronoto Film Festival in 2023, while Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 was unveiled at Cannes earlier this year but, in an unusual turn of events, both are being released in the U.K. a few weeks apart from each other. It seems churlish to ask "why now?" It could be a very long time before I'm blessed with a schedule like this in my local cinemas again.
Mortensen and Costner are continuing a curious and longstanding trend in cinema history of stars/leading men performing directorial duties on a Western. Costner himself made a triumphant debut behind the camera with Dances in the Wolves in 1990, following in the footsteps of the likes of William S. Hart (The Silent Man), Burt Lancaster (The Kentuckian), Ray Milland (A Man Alone), John Wayne (The Alamo), Marlon Brando (One-Eyed Jacks), Peter Fonda (The Hired Hand), Sidney Poitier (Buck and the Preacher), Clint Eastwood (High Plains Drifter), Kirk Douglas (Posse), Jack Nicholson (Goin' South), Ed Harris (Appaloosa) and Tommy Lee Jones (The Homesman), all of whom clearly felt that they had a vision to share of the Old West.
The dedication behind both projects is impressive in itself. Truthfully speaking, The Dead Don't Hurt has served more as an appetiser for the main course that is Horizon, probably my most anticpated film in recent memory. Prior to the screening of The Dead Don't Hurt I saw a poster in the lobby for Horizon and then a stirring trailer for Costner's film preceded Mortensen's. It was so enticing that the feature that followed may have suffered accordingly. The Dead Don't Hurt is also burdened with a title similar to Jim Jarmusch's embarrassing meta zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die from 2019.
Mutitasking in front of and behind the camera, Mortensen tries to do too much. As well as directing and starring he also functioned as a producer, co-screenwriter and composed the score. There's an uncertainty about the story he's telling as well as the scale of the project. A jack of all trades, his character is by turns a humble immigrant, frontiersman, husband, father, carpenter, soldier and lawman. The film starts out as a town tamer Western but also gives the audience an immigrant story with feminist themes, a US Civil War backdrop, mythical-poetic conceits and Freudian notions littering the overwrought screenplay, which feels very much influenced by the stars' prior work. With its dreamy interludes one senses the influence of Lisandro Alonso, wth whom Mortensen worked on Jauja and Eureka, while the father-son relationship has echoes of The Road. He's a compelling onscreen presence but the film struggles when it focuses on the horribly miscast Vicky Krieps. Her presence suggests an insufferable 21st century progressive type in period dress, a fault common in contemporary films that are set in the past. Solly McLeod also overdoes his villainous role, as though he's concerned that the audience might not have gauged how loathsome his character is meant to be. Casting is a dying artform.
