Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen wrote, directed, starred in and scored his new film. Adam Bloodworth meets a rare talent
As Aragorn in Lord of the Rings, Viggo Mortensen helped the trilogy battle its way to 2.9 billion dollars for the international box office, a record-breaking sum that earmarked a new era of fantasy. But for the actor from New York, Middle Earth was a relative flash-in-the-pan moment. The 65-year-old has spent the last two decades (the final Rings film came out in 2003) working as a polymath, writing, directing, acting, and publishing poetry and visual art.
His Lord of the Rings alum Elijah Wood recently called Mortensen “a true, true artist.” (Emphasis on the double “true.”) In his latest film, The Dead Don’t Hurt, in cinemas now, Mortensen has one-upped himself, for the first time scoring the music for his own movie as well as acting, writing and directing. He says the musical storytelling is designed to occasionally take precedence over the acting, and that sound and images are not always designed to work together; sometimes in contrast to one another.
Stubbing out a cigarette on the bottom of his boot on the balcony of a London hotel room, Viggo Mortensen takes a seat on the sofa opposite me as I recite to him what his former Lord of the Rings co-star said. How do complements like that feel? “Very flattering,” says Morgensen, using just the one “very.” “Especially from someone like him, you know. He’s got a lot of things that he’s knowledgeable about. I respect him and I’m flattered.”
Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings
You get the impression not everyone can earn Mortensen’s respect. It’s been a long day of interviews when we meet and when I ask how promotion’s been going, he says “some of the conversations are more interesting than others.”
The Dead Don’t Hurt shows off Mortensen’s drive. It’s a sensitive rethinking of the Western, a feminist iteration in which the story of Vicky Krieps’ character Vivienne is extrapolated over most of the movie. Mortensen’s Holger goes to war, only the war is never shown. There’s barely any shootouts so when there is one, it matters. Mortensen’s Hulger explodes as an impassioned progressive, unwilling to swim with the current in corrupt macho backwater America. In the bar, he raises a beer to progress, not competitiveness. When things go wrong, the camera lingers over the couple with all of the time in the world. It makes you realise how Westerns can be soft and squishy in all the right ways.
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“There’s been several instances of audiences saying ‘I don’t usually watch Westerns or, even more directly, I don’t like westerns but I liked this movie,” says Mortensen. “And that’s great. It’s great for our movie and it’s good for Westerns.
The Power of the Dog and Killers of the Flower Moon have certainly brought the genre back en vogue. “Yeah,” says Mortensen, speaking softly in thoughtful agreement. “It’s a genre that lends itself to many different kinds of stories. We made a classic Western, in terms of how it looks and sounds, but there’s obviously new ground.”
I do writing, directing, acting, but not at once. One job at a time. Each a success, if possible
Viggo Mortensen on approaching the job of directing, acting and scoring a film
Mortensen says women in Westerns are often “really powerful, or extraordinarily beautiful in some conventional way.” He speaks slowly in a deep baritone. “This is not that. Vivienne is a woman of her time, with the limitations of her time, an ordinary woman with an unusual inner strength and blend of courage and decency. I’m sure there were lots of women like that at the time, strong women, independent in their thinking. There had to have been. But those stories hadn’t been told.”
“Having a story in which the male lead goes off to war, and we don’t see one second of that, that’s very unusual. That’s one of the things I wanted to explore. What happens to women when their fathers, their brothers, their partners, their sons go off to fight in male wars? Westerns have that kind of range potential: to deal with history, mythology, mythmaking, nation building, and the complexity of society. You can explore new things and still be faithful to the classic traditions of the genre and be historically accurate.”
Holger wears his anger. How is it playing a character almost constantly at boiling point? “I didn’t have to think much about it,” says Mortensen, quickening his speech. I wonder if this is the sort of question that bores him senseless. “I had to be on display and react, which is what acting is. Good acting is always based on good reacting.” It’s on brand for a true artist not to like to describe how they approach their craft. Perhaps it feels cheap to go behind the characters and peer into the process.
With rumours of Aragorn’s return in forthcoming Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum (Mortensen has said he’s open to a reappearance if the script is good), how does he choose his roles, given he’s currently working on four further scripts? “I do lots of things but I don’t do them all at once,” he says. “I believe in one job at a time, each job a success, if possible. I think there’s a difference between excellence and perfection, you know. Perfection, there is no such thing. Really.”
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“Whether it’s big projects or little projects, I always try to look for stories that I think are challenging, worth telling. It takes a long time to prepare them, shoot them and then promote them. It’s a long, long time and lots of energy is required. It’s much better to set out to do something or be involved in something that at least on paper feels like it could be special. Even if it doesn’t turn out. At least you can still talk about what you were attempting to do.”
Fans of Lord of the Rings will be delighted to unearth an Easter Egg in The Dead Don’t Hurt. Mortensen fights with Aragorn’s sword in one of the few combat scenes. Was it a purposeful titbit for LOTR fans? A plea to Andy Serkis for a role in the new film? “No, I just thought it was kind of cool,” says Mortensen, happy to relax into nostalgia conversations about his biggest work. “I thought it was fun, obviously. We got permission from Peter Jackson. They said it was okay because it’s only a few seconds. You might not even notice it but of course true Lord of the Rings fans, somebody’s going to notice.” He goes into producer mode and spots an opportunity to shift tickets to The Dead Don’t Hurt: “I would say no self respecting Lord of the Rings fan should miss the opportunity to see the sword on the big screen!”
Die-hard fans are closer than Mortensen thought: Vicky Krieps’ dialect coach nearly lost his mind when he heard about the sword’s cameo role. “He’s a big Lord of the Rings fan, I didn’t realise that at first,” says Mortensen. “He comes over, she’s [Krieps] sitting on a horse and he goes,” he reduces his voice to an intense whisper: “‘Can I touch it? Can I touch it?’ That’s creepy… touch what? ‘Can I touch the sword?’’’ She had no idea what he was talking about. He just wanted to touch the sword!” He breaks into a giggle. “That was funny.”
The Dead Don’t Hurt starring and created by Viggo Mortensen is in selected cinemas now
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