Viggo Mortensen in Two Films, with Cronneberg & another with Lisandro Alonso
(On David Cronenberg)[He] has helped me do really good work, better than other directors. Maybe because he understands my process and because we have some things in common in terms of our sensibility – the kinds of books we like to read, our sense of humor is similar.
It’s comforting to be working with someone you know will make a good movie. Some people will say, ‘Ahhh, he’s over the top, it’s gratuitous,’ [but] I disagree completely. He’s one of the most responsible filmmakers today as far as showing violence – which there’s very little of compared to other movies. It just stays with you because he shows very little of it. It just stays with you and he’s very direct about it. He shows you what happens, and what the consequences are physically and emotionally, in some cases; certainly he does in A History of Violence (2005), and also here [in Eastern Promises (2007)], that makes him very honest.
Eureka – Viggo’s new film with Jauja director Lisandro Alonso
The first part of the film, titled “Western” and set on the U.S.-Mexico border, will have echos of Jauja but is not a sequel, following Mortensen playing a father named Murphy searching for his daughter (Agger), who has been kidnapped. The second part of the film, titled “Pine Ridge,” is set in South Dakota on a Native American Reservation in the present-day. While there aren’t details on Part 3 yet, Part 4, titled “Amazonia,” will follow a character named Ubirajara, “a member of a far happier indigenous settlement in the Amazon who goes off to dig for gold, contracting, literally, gold fever.”
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Far from Men
See Far from Men – Viggo Mortensen and Albert Camus (Previous post)
Viggo on his art –
“Photography, painting or poetry those are just extensions of me, how I perceive things, they are my way of communicating.” (via IMDB)
Happy birthday Viggo Mortensen