Viggo Mortensen studied “hundreds” of classic Westerns for The Dead Don’t Hurt

In preparation for his new movie, The Dead Don’t Hurt, Viggo Mortensen turned to a huge number of old Westerns in order to get things just right.

Between Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt and Kevin Costner’s Horizon saga, it’s fair to say that the Western might be making a definitive comeback. But Mortensen’s tale of love and separation is a quieter affair, telling a story through the lens of female perspective and solitude.

Dexerto spoke to Mortensen (who wrote, directed, and starred in the new movie) and co-star Vicky Krieps about The Dead Don’t Hurt, where they revealed just how much research they put into the drama. Turns out, it was a lot.

“I was mostly looking at [Westerns] — hundreds of them — and I shared some,” Mortensen said. “I would say, ‘This is not a very good movie, but look at the way this person gets on their horse.’ Part of the research was watching all those Westerns and finding little things that worked.”

But it wasn’t just Western movies that formed the preparation for The Dead Don’t Hurt. Mortensen and his team also turned to real-world research, all essential in ensuring his new film was historically accurate while maintaining a level of creative freedom.

“Even in some cases, it was as important as looking at real life accounts at the time. Contemporary accounts, photographs that we found at the Smithsonian and other places of miners and cowboys, and women and buildings,” he added.

“You have one chance to tell this particular Western story. I wanted to do it as correctly, historically, as possible. Not that the movie or the acting has to be perfect — it’s got to be real and organic and free.”

While Mortensen studied countless classic Westerns in order to emulate the genre from a visual perspective, Krieps found inspiration in looking at real-life figures for her character Vivienne. In the film, Vivienne is left to fend for herself after her new lover, Olsen (Mortensen) leaves to go fight in the war.

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For Krieps, she knew that watching old Westerns would only get her so far in trying to accurately portray a woman of that time.

“I tried to take from history itself,” she said. “I wanted to find an authentic character from that time, because Westerns were not made in 1860. So if you look at a Western, you can see how they were thinking of the Western world, and it became a style of movie making. But it’s not a documentary of the time.

“It was more trying to be authentic in a way that she would feel like someone almost like me, but someone European in the Western world. The cowboys, I think, for them it was more important to keep up with the style. I was pretty free, because there’s not many women I could relate to.”

The Dead Don’t Hurt is currently in cinemas across the UK.

For more of the Old West, check out our guide to the best Western TV shows. You can also see when Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 is out, and take a look at how to watch all the Kevin Costner Westerns.