Viggo Mortensen’s first feature as a director, 2020’s “Falling,” was in some ways an exercise in rigorous, controlled filmmaking, a family drama that jumped between generations to tell a subtle but explosive story about age, memory and forgiveness. But his second film, “The Dead Don’t Hurt,” which premiered on Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival, is something entirely different. It’s still controlled, to be sure, but simultaneously controlled and freewheeling, a period Western that introduces cliches only to subvert or twist them.
It jumps around in time in a purposeful use of misdirection, and it’s a Western that gives the Old West – in this case, Nevada in the 1860s – a healthy population of immigrants, from the Danish sheriff Holger Olsen (Mortensen) to his partner (not wife) Vivienne Le Coudy (Vicky Krieps), who speaks French but answers his question, “Where are you from?” with a blunt, “I am American.”