Vig­go Mortensen: ​‘I love work­ing with direc­tors who resist explain­ing things’

It’s quite breath­tak­ing the extent to which actor Vig­go Mortensen has engaged in a pro­fes­sion­al cut and switch, shun­ning his main­stream break­through and select­ing projects that he feels per­son­al­ly pas­sion­ate about and work­ing with film­mak­ers who are work­ing on the fringes of cin­e­ma. The sal­ad days of Lord of the Rings are no more, and now he’s mak­ing movies like Jau­ja, a bizarre and beau­ti­ful exis­ten­tial west­ern about a father search­ing for his daugh­ter on the rocky tun­dras of south­ern Argentina.

The film, by Argen­tine direc­tor Lisan­dro Alon­so, comes across as a true col­lab­o­ra­tion between actor and direc­tor, redo­lent of the work Mortensen was doing with David Cro­nen­berg, such as East­ern Promis­es and A His­to­ry of Vio­lence. We met Mortensen dur­ing the 2014 Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val where he spoke about foot­ball, fes­ti­vals and the joys of break­ing convention.

“At Cannes, we were on the red car­pet with home­made signs. It said in Span­ish, ​“We Want The Cup” which meant the equiv­a­lent for all the Amer­i­c­as of the Champion’s League. The team that I like, and the team that the screen­writer Fabi­an Casas likes is San Loren­zo. And they had nev­er won it before. And that’s goes back 60 years to when the club first start­ed. We’d come close, but nev­er quite nabbed it. The five oth­er big tra­di­tion­al teams had all each won it, and they would habit­u­al­ly make fun of us. So we did actu­al­ly win it that year, so we’re play­ing in the world cham­pi­onship of clubs. When­ev­er I’m in Argenti­na I try to go and see them.”

“We had some great screen­ings in Toron­to. Like anoth­er Argen­tine movie I made a few years ago, I real­ly got a kick from just watch­ing how an Anglo Sax­on audi­ence would relate to it. They were real­ly, real­ly pos­i­tive. They got all the humour and they stayed for the Q&A and asked great ques­tions. Even if you resist it or object to its rhythm of its strange­ness, it’s a movie that cuts through the fog, espe­cial­ly for peo­ple who see a lot of movies. It stays in your mind despite the untold amount of images that stay in your head dur­ing a fes­ti­val. I think it’s also a film that evolves. I’ve talked to peo­ple who’ve seen it a cou­ple of days after, and some of ​’em have seen it a sec­ond of time, and their per­cep­tion evolves. It’s a movie they debate inside themselves.”

“Lisandro’s pre­vi­ous films haven’t been what you’d call con­ven­tion­al­ly beau­ti­ful. But this one is, I think. And that’s what you get when you hire a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er like Timo Salmi­nen whose known for his old-fash­ioned, the­atri­cal light­ing and com­po­si­tion. It lends some­thing extra to Lisandro’s usu­al treat­ment of peo­ple and land­scape. I think it’s real­ly effec­tive, because in a sub­tle way, it helps you move towards some­thing that is a lit­tle more like a dream state. The more mun­dane the dia­logue is, the more nat­u­ral­is­tic the behav­iour is. With that light­ing it’s already set­ting the scene for… something.”

“The sug­ges­tion is that it’s this stan­dard west­ern plot, like The Searchers, with this guy going off to look for his daugh­ter in a wild land­scape. But I think it earns each bold step it takes. There are aspects you can debate with the peo­ple you see it with. What Lisan­dro does which is unique is that he makes a movie in Jau­ja that’s tru­ly orig­i­nal that doesn’t real­ly make ref­er­ence to oth­er direc­tors or oth­er movies. Lisan­dro resists explain­ing things. And that’s no dif­fer­ent to David Cro­nen­berg. They’re both direc­tors I like because they ask a lot of ques­tions and they don’t give you any answers. They respect you as an audi­ence. There is a sto­ry there, and there is some­thing that hap­pened, there is a res­o­nance. A lot of movies that make it into the main­stream top 10 lists, you’re not going to want to go back and watch them again. You know they won’t improve. Jau­ja has a stay­ing power.”

“With any movie, you have a good 10 min­utes. Maybe 15, that’s a free pass with the audi­ence. It’s that time where you don’t real­ly know what’s going on and it takes a while for you to cou­ple with the world the direc­tor is offer­ing. But after 15 min­utes, if you’re still at that dis­con­nect, it’s like­ly you’ll turn off. With Cro­nen­berg, recent things like A His­to­ry of Vio­lence or East­ern Promis­es, even those first min­utes you do won­der what’s going on. Is this clum­sy? Is there some­thing off? It’s his world, and you have to make the effort to slip into it. This is what hap­pens with Lisan­dro. He grabs you with this beau­ti­ful imagery, and you’re drawn in. There’s some­thing hap­pen­ing, there’s a sto­ry, but one which goes at its own pace. He breaks with convention.”