Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt

There was no shortage of violence in the Old West, but there was also a lot of quiet loneliness. There are plenty of both in Viggo Mortensen’s new revisionist western, but the lonely moments are safer. No matter how revisionist it might be, revenge still needs to be taken in director-screenwriter-composer-co-star Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt, which opens this Friday in theaters.

The title has a spaghetti western ring to it, but the vibe is more Heaven’s Gate. Just about every man Vivienne Le Coudy meets is an exploiter, except Holger Olsen. That is why she ran off with him so quickly. Unfortunately, we know it will end tragically, because the film starts with Olsen mourning Le Coudy at her death bed. The ensuing flashbacks explain why Olsen will be gunning for Weston Jeffries, the violently entitled son of wealthy Alfred Jeffries, who runs the nearest town with the brazenly corrupt Mayor Rudolph Schiller.

As a veteran in his native Denmark, Olsen believed he could enlist for the $100 bonus, fight for his new country, and return home after a relatively short time. Le Coudy is rightly skeptical, but she lets him go anyway. Unfortunately, that leaves her to fend for herself in the lawless town. Of course, the years drag by, until Olsen finally returns to meet Vincent, the son he never knew he “had.” Despite the circumstances, Olsen and the little boy quickly develop a rapport, so the soldier-turned-sheriff will always protect his son, even after the sins done to Le Coudy cause further physical decline and death.

Dead Don’t Hurt is about as slow as a western can get and still be a western. It still has all the elements, particularly the striking landscape—mostly shot on-location in Durango, Mexico. Mortensen can definitely play the strong silent type, so he perfectly cast himself as Olsen. As usual, he slow-burns like nobody’s business.

Yet, Vicky Krieps is the true lead as Le Coudy. She brings a lot of strength and sensitivity to the part. Watching her work in The Dead Don’t Hurt gives real sense of the dangers women faced on the frontier. However, it is worth remembering conditions for women weren’t much better in the Old World—and often they were worse. Ask the women of the shtetls about the Cossacks. Wherever you were, life in the late 19^th Century was just brutish and short.

Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future (the New One)

David Cronenberg is catching the Greek Weird Wave, filming his latest in the ancient but economically depressed nation. Aesthetically, they are perfect for each other. Body horror meets subversive, extreme anti-social behavior. Yet, according to Cronenberg’s vision of the future, both the body and society are evolving, but to what is yet to be determined in Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, not the one from 1970, the entirely new and unrelated one that opens this Friday in New York.

It is not exactly clear how far into the future this film takes us, or where, but the environment is vaguely Mediterranean, for obvious reasons. Cronenberg doesn’t exactly pander to viewers during the prologue, in which a mother smothers to death her son, for eating the plastic waste basket.

Those are definitely Weird Wave vibes. Saul Tenser delivers the body horror, but he calls it art. For years, his body has spontaneously generated new mutant organs, which his partner Caprice surgically removes during their performance art programs. Each organ is considered a work of art that the newly formed National Organ Registry duly records. Not surprisingly, the Registry’s two employees, Whippet and Timlin, are among Tenser’s biggest fans.

Lang Dotrice also closely follows Tenser’s work. In fact, he offers Tenser a concept for his next show: autopsying Dotrice’s son, Brecken, who was killed at the start of the film. Dotrice leads a mysterious cult that has genetically modified themselves, so they can only consume plastic waste. Brecken was the first of their progeny to naturally develop their ability to digest plastic, but he apparently creeped out his unevolved-human mother.

Cronenberg definitely brings the gross and the weird, but the story and characters are a bit sketchy. This is an idea film and a mood piece rather than an exercise in story-telling to hold viewers rapt. However, the mood is pretty darned moody. Even though this is the future, everything looks dark, decaying, and fetid, like it could be part of a shared world with Naked Lunch, while the strange surgical and therapeutic devices look like they were inspired by the designs of H.R. Giger.

Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux are perfectly cast and do indeed create an intriguing relationship dynamic as Tenser and Caprice. Cronenberg raises some challenging questions about the roles they both play in creating art, particularly with regards to the nature of authorship and intentionality.

Unfortunately, characters like the two mechanics from a shadowy Vogt-like multinational company, who are constantly servicing Tenser’s feeding chair and pain-relieving beds could have stumbled out of dozens of uninspired dystopian films. (Frankly, the sort of bring to mind the Super Mario Brothers movie, which is not a good thing.) Beyond Tenser and Caprice, the most interesting character might be Det. Cope of the new vice squad, who is trying to anticipate future crimes against the body. Welket Bungue portrays his hardboiledness with subtlety not found anywhere else in the film.

TIFF ’15: Horizon

Georg Guðni Hauksson did something rather remarkable. The Icelandic artistic came up with an original approach to traditional landscape painting. His work was internationally hailed, but he tragically died at the peak of his productivity. Fridrik Thór Fridriksson & co-director Bergur Bernburg survey Guðni’s work and try to evoke its spirit in Horizon (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

In some ways, Guðni’s timing was perfect. He attended Icelandic art school in the 1980s, at a time when that was suddenly the thing to do. He duly experimented with loud, fast, punk-inspired styles, but it was his secret landscape work that would eventually make his reputation.

Although perfectly representational, his landscapes look otherworldly and almost avant-garde. Rather than outlining shapes and then filling in colors, Guðni’s laborious method involved the meticulous layering of horizontal lines, one atop another, sort of like a weaver’s loom. The resulting work was often stark, but undeniably Nordic. There are no online records of his art being used on ECM record jackets, but his work would certainly be compatible with Manfred Eicher’s aesthetic.

Fridriksson & Bernburg incorporate long excerpts from archival interviews with Guðni, but they are not as revealing as one might hope. However, they get some helpful context from Icelandic art critics and Guðni’s contemporaries, as well as actor Viggo Mortensen, who published a book with Guðni at his specialty imprint, Percival Press. They also punctuate the talking heads and close-ups of paintings with impressionistic scenes of the Icelandic fields and valleys that so inspired him.

Guðni’s paintings are quite striking once you acclimate yourself to his distinctive look and the nature scenes are perfectly pleasant, but what really makes the film is the haunting minimalist soundtrack composed by Sigur Rós sideman Kjartan Hólm. Frankly, it really sounds like something that could be released on ECM, which is high praise indeed.

Horizon is an earnest and thorough examination of Guðni’s oeuvre that should give any open-minded viewer a keen appreciation of vision. However, even with Mortensen’s participation and support, it is hard to envision it getting a wide American distribution, so if you are in Toronto and are intrigued to any extent, you should see it now. Recommended for contemporary art connoisseurs, Horizon screens again tomorrow (9/15) and Saturday (9/19) as part of this year’s TIFF.

Tribeca ’15: Far from Men

Nobel Prize Laureate Albert Camus is associated with existentialism, but he was really a determined foe of all totalitarian “isms.” He is also closely linked to his Algerian birthplace, with good reason. In addition to his celebrated novels The Plague, The Stranger, and the posthumously published but still quite good The First Man, Camus’s most anthologized short story, “The Guest,” is also set in Algeria. Screen-writer-director David Oelhoffen thoughtfully but not entirely faithfully adapts Camus’s story as Far from Men (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, following its U.S. premiere at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

Daru is a former military officer trying to make amends for his mysterious past by serving as a school teacher in a remote village. The meditative life seems to suit him, but it will be rudely interrupted by Balducci, the gendarme. Whether he wants to or not, Daru has been tasked with escorting Balducci’s Algerian prisoner to the nearest French outpost in Tinguit, where he will likely be executed. That night, Daru makes it clear to the man named Mohamed, he is welcome to escape at any time. However, the admitted murder seems perversely intent of facing French justice. He does indeed have his reasons, which constitute some unusually smart writing on Oelhoffen’s part.

Unfortunately, Mohamed family did not have the blood money to buy peace after he justifiably killed his cousin. As a result, Daru will find himself in the middle of an intra-family feud, as well as increasingly violent uprising led by many of his former Algerian army colleagues. Fortunately, Daru is a crack shot with a rifle, because he will have to shoot his way out of a lot of trouble.

Essentially, Oelhoffen trades the icy cold irony of the Camus story for the tragic sweep of a revisionist Algerian western. Cinematographer Guillaume Deffontaines fully exploits the craggy terrain’s epic big sky country possibilities. After playing the Gloomy Gus in self-consciously arty films like Jauja and Everybody has a Plan, Viggo Mortensen finally finds the right vehicle for his simmering tough guy intensity. It also further burnishes his polyglot chops, this time showcasing him in French. Reda Ketab’s performance as Mohamed is almost too impassive as Mohamed, but it still sort of works for a pseudo western, in the moody Anthony Mann tradition.

Frankly, Far from Men is exactly the kind of film the pretentious Jauja should have been, but so wasn’t. It critically engages with a lot of hot button issues, including colonialism and tribalism, but never at the expense of its lean and mean narrative. Visually striking and tightly disciplined, Far from Men is recommended for fans of Mortensen and historical drama when it opens this Friday (5/1) in New York at the Cinema Village, following hard on the heels of its well-received screenings at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Jauja: Viggo in the Wilderness

Imagine watching a pan-and-scan version of John Ford’s wide-screen masterpiece The Searchers on a smart phone. Even though the film is a classic, it would be a frustrating way to watch it. Yet, Lisandro Alonso intentionally does something similar. Probably the best thing going for his latest film is the stunning Patagonian backdrop, but he filmed the picture in the videographic 4:3 TV-like aspect ratio. Audiences should be warned, Alonso’s experimental aesthetic will always trumps their viewing experience in Jauja (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Captain Gunnar Dinesen is a Danish land surveyor serving during the so-called late 1800s “Conquest of the Desert” and therefore culpable for genocide in the film’s eyes. The only thing that interests him in Argentina is his daughter Ingeborg, for whom he seems to have an unhealthy attachment. Perhaps out of spite, she runs off with a rakish young military officer, so her father sets off in hot pursuit. He will follow and follow and follow, as the film slowly descends into a tiresome Beckett-like exercise in absurdism. However, in the final minutes, it throws a pointless surreal reality twister at us that is probably supposed to be Borgesian, but really just invalidates any lingering investment we might still have in the film.

Frankly, Jauja is the sort of film that mostly relies on intimidation to get by. Far too many critics are afraid to call out films that are high in pretension and low in substance for fear they will be dismissed as knuckle-dragging philistines or uneducated rubes. Take it from someone well versed in poststructuralist critical theory and reasonably conversant in the history of experimental cinema—damn little happens in Jauja.

Still, it is hard to believe Viggo Mortensen is the star of both the Lord of the Rings trilogy and this film. As Dinesen, he is credibly intense in a tunnel vision sort of way, but he is mostly just out there on his own. Someone ought to toss him Tom Hanks’ volleyball from Castaway.

Perhaps you thought Jauja was the third Gabor Sister, but in this context it is a mythical city of wealth and luxury that kind of sort of represents all manner of quixotic quests. However, the film is really about obsession and European guilt, which somehow manages to come out through the characters’ stilted interactions and the meager servings of narrative. It will have plenty of critical champions, but in this case the emperor has no clothes. Not recommended, Jauja opens tomorrow (3/20) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Two Faces of January: The Somewhat Talented Mr. MacFarland

He is an American veteran with a considerably younger wife and a flexible conscience. He cuts a Don Draper-like figure, but Patricia Highsmith’s anti-hero was created during the Mad Men era. The Greek coppers are no match for Chester MacFarland, but an under-achieving Ivy Leaguer will be a more formidable rival in Hossein Amini’s adaptation of The Two Faces of January (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Although he shares a clear kinship with the talented Tom Ripley, MacFarland lacks his literary cousin’s long-term strategic thinking. After bilking his investors, including some rather “connected” gentlemen, with a Ponzi scheme, MacFarland has blithely embarked on a European tour with his young wife, Collette. He seems to embody all the financial security and mature masculinity she always needed, yet something about their scruffy American tour guide Rydal Keener catches her eye. There is no question about Keener’s attraction to the trophy wife, but he is also struck by MacFarland’s eerie resemblance to his recently deceased father.

After a fateful night of sightseeing and boozing, MacFarland is confronted by a private detective representing his dodgy former clients. As the discussion gets heated, a struggle ensues, during which MacFarland accidentally kills the flatfoot. In full panic mood, the swindler flees the hotel with Collette, leaving their passports behind. As international fugitives, they now engage Keener as their guide through the Southern European underworld. The circumstances have changed, but three is still an awkward crowd.

January is truly a lushly crafted film, luxuriating in its exotic locales and natty costumes. Veteran Dogme cinematographer Marcel Zyskind proves to be surprisingly adept at the sun-bathed noir look, capitalizing on all the striking Mediterranean backdrops. Production designer Michael Carlin and costumer Steven Noble also recreate the look and feel of 1962 in rich detail. In fact, it is a technically accomplished film in every respect.

Nonetheless, Highsmith’s slim novel still feels rather undernourished on-screen. Frankly, some of Hossein’s deviations from the source material undermine the film’s dramatic credibility. Killing a police officer is serious business in any country, but it is hard to believe a Yankee with a suitcase full of cash couldn’t bribe his way out of trouble with a dead American P.I. in early 1960’s Greece.

Regardless, Viggo Mortensen might have been born to play MacFarland, subtly hinting at all the neuroses the strong, silent anti-hero is bluffing over. Frankly, Mortensen’s powerfully understated performance and the tilt of Hossein’s screenplay complete stack the deck against poor Keener and Collette, no matter who was filling their shoes. Indeed, it would be hard to understand why the younger man is so bewitched by the pale, dull Kirsten Dunst, but Oscar Isaac’s Keener is equally empty.

Fortunately, villains (and anti-heroes) are always more important than their dullard antagonists in any film noir. Between the lovely sights and Mortensen’s smart, sophisticated work, January manages to offer enough to fans of literary thrillers looking for a fix. Recommended on balance, The Two Faces of January opens this Friday (9/26) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine and the AMC Empire.

Everybody has a Plan, Especially Twins

You would think paranoia would run deep amongst identical twins.  That whole doppelganger possibility is just unnerving.  One existentially morose pediatrician does indeed assume his twin’s life under suitably shady circumstances in Ana Piterbarg’s Everybody has a Plan (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Frankly, Agustín has no reason to be so miserable.  He has a thriving practice in Buenos Aires and an intelligent professional wife.  They are on the brink of adopting an infant, but it is safe to say she is far more enthusiastic than he.  In fact, he rather precipitously puts the kibosh on their plans, falling into a depressive stupor shortly thereafter.  However, relief arrives in the unlikeliest form when his prodigal twin Pedro unexpectedly pays a visit.  Terminally ill, the deadbeat brother wants a final favor from Agustín.

Following the grass-is-greener line of reasoning, Agustín takes Pedro’s place in the hardscrabble Tigre Delta, but he did not exactly do his due diligence.  Before long, Agustín learns in addition to beekeeping, he is also now a part-time member of a ruthless gang of kidnappers.  Still, it is not all bad.  In fact, he quickly develops a relationship with Rosa, the young woman who helps tend his hives.

Piterbarg really puts the “slow” in “slow burner.”  She drenches the noir-ish morality tale in swampy atmosphere, but her pacing would generously be described as languid.  Daniel Fanego provides a genuine sense of menace as the sociopathic ringleader, Adrián, but our anti-hero is far more inclined to rumination than action.  Fortunately, brooding and seething are definitely well within Viggo Mortensen’s power zone.  He keeps audiences vested and focused, despite the film’s determination to takes its sweet time.  However, the question remains, does his morally problematic Agustín qualify as an “evil twin?”

Having lived in Argentina and Venezuela during his early years, co-producer Mortensen is clearly comfortable with the language and setting.  Presumably, Piterbarg was aiming for a rustic suspense vibe somewhat in the tradition of Night of the Hunter, but the result is closer to contemporary Latin American art cinema, deeply rooted in its environment, but elevating character and tone above plot and dialogue.  Stylish but often maddeningly reserved, Everybody has a Plan is recommended mostly for diehard fans of Mortensen and Argentine cinema when it opens this Friday (3/22) in New York at the Angelika Film Center and the AMC Empire.