“It is difficult these days to get people to leave home and streaming” – Interview with Viggo Mortensen
The Danish actor-director opened Karlovy Vary with his second feature The Dead Don’t Hurt and shares his view on the blessings of festivals and festival experiences in Karlovy Vary, Cannes and Ukraine.
He has still his boyish charm, despite his 63 years. Viggo Mortensen opened the 58th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival with his western The Dead Don’t Hurt, which he wrote and directed. At the festival’s opening ceremony, the Danish star was honoured with the Festival President’s Award. Before entering the Grand Hall of Hotel Thermal, Mortensen walked the Red Carpet in his tuxedo, greeting fans, signing autographs and posing for endless selfies, handsome and energetic as if he had wrapped Lord of The Rings just recently and not over 20 years ago.
Yes, the actor-director is a festival regular and a festival pro, for sure. The multifaceted actor began his career in the mid-1980s and knows how to elegantly balance between artistic ambition and commercial needs. With The Dead Don’t Hurt, he was presenting his second film as director and leading actor—a feminist western. Its hero is a strong and self-sufficient woman, Vivienne, played by Vicky Krieps, who falls in love with Mortensen’s character Olsen, leaving her alone for three years to join a war.
Do films need festivals? Do directors need festivals even more? Are festivals celebrating the art of filmmaking or have they turned to PR tools for mere film promotion? On a roundtable interview in Karlovy Vary’s famous Hotel Pupp, I took the opportunity to ask Mortensen about the multiple functions of film fests today.
Mr Mortensen, how important are festivals for you as actor and filmmaker? Are they places of cinematic inspiration and encounters, or is a place like Karlovy Vary only another stopover on a promotion tour for The Dead Don’t Hurt?
Viggo Mortensen: Festivals are for independent films more important than ever, especially to get people since COVID to go and see a movie in a cinema. I really believe that if you don’t see our film on a big screen or hear the sound mix properly, you lose a lot. On a festival, you can actually show the movie in the perfect way. I can go and check the sound and make sure that everything is just right. So the audience gets to see and experience the movie in the best possible version. It’s more difficult these days to get people to leave their home and streaming.
So Karlovy Vary—and every festival—is also a forum for optimal movie watching?
VM: Of course it also helps to promote the movie. The Dead Don’t Hurt is coming out on July 4th in the Czech Republic. That was pointed out even before the festival’s decision. So the festival presence is certainly helpful to the distributor. And I enjoy people to see it in a movie theater.
This is your second feature film as a director after your debut Falling in 2020. I remember that you put so much effort in it, but Falling was released in the middle of the pandemic. What happened that you weren’t discouraged—but came along immediately with The Dead Don’t Hurt?
VM: We were lucky yet. We had a really good start, with great reviews. I was especially happy for Lance Henriksen who played the main part. He is the guy who had done at that point about 300, maybe even more films—lots of work. But he had never been to a major film festival. And we were invited to compete in Cannes! And then, Cannes was canceled.
Covid erased the 73th edition of Cannes 2020 from the festival landmark. How did you get along with that frustration?
VM: I was especially disappointed for Lance because I thought he deserved it so much. He is more than 80 years old now, I don’t know if he’s going to do a lot more movies. There was a chance, a unique chance to experience that unique festival. I had promised him: “You’re going to have fun, we’re gonna blow up the Red Carpet together!” And then—nothing. So I was very disappointed for him. I was sure that the movie would eventually find an audience over time.
How well did Falling without any festival presence?
VM: If a movie is interesting or original enough, eventually it will have its viewing from audiences and some platforms on what you want them to see in the movie theater. But at the time that movie was trying to come out, it could hardly be released anywhere in cinemas. Except in Spain, where it was in theaters for four, five months nonstop. During the pandemic, I started writing The Dead Don’t Hurt. Fortunately, it didn’t take nearly five years to secure the money. We were fortunate to find an investor who put up almost all the money in one place. That was unusual for an independent film and doesn’t happen so often. Usually, a financing consists of 50 different entities.
Your movie opened this year’s edition of KVIFF. Prior to it, you screened this movie also in the Ukrainian festival Mykolaichuk OPEN in Chernivtsi, in its third edition. Was that a political and humanitarian act as well as cinematic statement?
VM: I thought, well, they have this festival, and it’s called an international festival with films from USA, Europe, Asia—but no directors or actors are going. So I thought it would be nice for them to have eventually one filmmaker there at least. It turned out to be logistically a little complicated: a couple of different airplanes into Romania, then driving for six, seven hours. But we made it and I knew it was the right thing when I was there.
What exactly was extraordinary when you opened that festival with your The Dead Don’t Hurt?
VM: To the Ukrainian audience, my movie was very immediate. Sentences like “I’m alone, my husband died last month,” or “I don’t know when or whether my father or boyfriend is coming back,” or “I have a little baby without a father,” resonated so differently! These people did not need to imagine “If there was a war…”—no, there IS a war, and we are all in this situation.
It’s mostly the women who are on their own when the men go off to war. Now, they are also going to war, but historically, women keep society together, keep the kids fed and schooled, keep daily life functioning, while men are out destroying each other and the landscape. Ukrainian people empathized immediately, and their resonance had another quality to it. I was very glad I went there.
Mariam Schaghaghi
Edited by Robert Horton
© FIPRESCI 2024