Viggo Mortensen is in good spirits. Last night, his second film as director, The Dead Don't Hurt, played to a standing ovation at the Glasgow Film Festival, and today the 65-year-old star, always a calm, modest man, admits to being ‘very happy with the reception’. His back is turned as he walks around his hotel suite twiddling at the window blinds to moderate the sun, but his smile can be heard in his voice. Another twiddle. When he finally sits down to face Total Film, his handsome features are dramatically swathed in shadow.
‘I actually wasn't trying to reinvent the western; I wanted to be respectful of something that I admire, which is the well-made, classic western,’ he explains of the revisionist . Set in an 1860s frontier community in Nevada, the understated story focuses on the burgeoning romantic relationship between two immigrants, the fiercely independent French-Canadian Vivienne Le Coudy, played by Vicky Krieps, and Danish carpenter Holger,
