The return of the king: 10 different roles Viggo Mortensen

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“Soldier Jane” (1998)

At first, Mortensen, who began his career quite late – he played his first episodic role in Witness (1985) at the age of 27 – was remembered for several supporting roles. One of the most notable was the stern warrior John James Argyle, flaunting his mustache, bearing, long rank (chief master petty officer) and the short nickname “Chief”. His character is the mentor of young Jordan O’Neill (Demi Moore), a girl trying to get into the elite intelligence unit of the US Navy. This couple goes from mutual contempt to respect for each other in the final and very touching scene of awarding combat medals.

“Lord of the Rings” (2001-2003)

In Peter Jackson’s film adaptation, Mortensen played the already iconic role of Aragorn, a representative of an ancient but fading and obscure line of kings. Going from Gray Wanderer to King in the finale of the trilogy, Mortensen has gone from being a supporting character to the star of one of the most successful films of all time. However, at first, the producers were skeptical about his candidacy.

Previously, Stuart Townsend claimed the role of Aragorn, but Jackson considered him too young. Mortensen was confirmed just a few days before filming began and, by his own admission, was reluctant to take on the role, which, by the description, seemed too positive. Luckily, his son Henry, who was 11 at the time, convinced him otherwise. For which we are grateful to him.

“Justified Cruelty” (2005)

On the set of the drama, a fateful meeting for Mortensen with director David Cronenberg takes place, with whom the actor will star in three more films after that.

Tom Stoll (Mortensen) lives a quiet and ordinary life: he and his wife (Maria Bello) have two children, run a diner, wear plaid shirts and baggy jackets with corduroy cuffs, and drive an old pickup truck. One evening, two visitors try to rob his cafe. Unexpectedly for everyone, Tom rebuffs them and kills both of them during the fight. Sleepy Town is shocked at first, but soon turns Tom into a hero. They write about him in major newspapers and shoot reports, but soon Carl Fogerty (Ed Harris) comes to him – a man in black, who claims that Tom is not at all who he claims to be.

“Vice for Export” (2007)

Mortensen has a remarkable ability for languages ​​- in addition to Spanish, familiar to him since childhood, he also speaks Danish, French, English, a little Arabic and … Elvish. For the role in the crime drama “Vice for Export” by David Cronenberg, Mortensen had to learn a little more Russian. In the story, he plays Nikolai Luzhin, the henchman of the head of the Russian mafia in London, who plays a double game and helps Russian-born doctor Anna (Naomi Watts) save an infant who is living proof of rape.

In this dark and “homoerotic” thriller, according to Cronenberg, the director once again explores the psychology of violence. Especially for the role of Nikolai, which brought him the first of three Oscar nominations, Mortensen spent several months incognito in Russia.

“Dangerous Method” (2011)

Cronenberg and Mortensen continued their highly successful collaboration with A Dangerous Method. This is a historical drama about the friendship and rivalry between the two forefathers of modern psychology – Sigmund Freud, who developed the theory of psychoanalysis, and his younger colleague Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), the founder of analytical psychology. In preparation for the role of Freud, Mortensen not only re-read some of his works, but also correspondence with Jung and individual letters from Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), Jung’s patient, who later became a psychiatrist.

According to the actor, this not only helped him to better understand the context of their dialogues, but also to get to know Freud from a new side – as a person with humor, family and warm. Because of this, Freud in his performance turned out to be alive, his relationship with Jung was dynamic, and the focus of their dramatic relationship was not abstract ideas and principles, but human feelings like envy.

“Far From People” (2014)

The film by French director David Elhoffen is based on a short and partly autobiographical story by the writer and philosopher Albert Camus “The Guest” in 1957. The protagonist of the story Daru (Mortensen), like Camus, was one of the “pied noir” – a Frenchman born and living in Algeria. Daru works as a school teacher in the outback, where he teaches mostly Arabs. One day, the gendarme Balducci comes to him and instructs him to deliver Mohamed, who killed his cousin, to Tinguit.

Here lies the main difference between the story and the film – Camus Daru, in the spirit of the philosophy of existentialism, releases Mohamed and allows him to choose whether to go to Tinguit or escape, thereby avoiding punishment; with Elhoffen, this becomes the starting point for Daru and Mohamed’s journey through the desert lands of Algeria, where the flames of an imminent war of independence are smoldering.

“Green Book” (2018)

After the success of The Lord of the Rings, Mortensen is very careful in choosing roles and rarely appears in typical Hollywood stories. That’s why Peter Farrelly’s Green Book stands out so much. In this road movie, Mortensen plays bouncer Frank “Tony Chatterbox” Vallelonga, a typical early 60’s Italian-American who spares no hairspray, cuffs for drinkers, and jokes for friends. With a nightclub closed for renovations, Frank takes acclaimed African-American pianist Don Shirley (Mahershal Ali), a refined man with no tolerance for rudeness, on a tour of the American South, which continues to be segregated and racially intolerant.

This clear and linear story is decorated with the game of Ali and Mortensen, who played a character completely unusual for himself – direct and terribly talkative – and the sincerity that Nick Vallelonga put into the script about his father.

“Captain Fantastic” (2016)

But the film is much more characteristic of Mortensen. In the director’s chair – Matt Ross, known as an actor. The budget is very small, the cast is wonderful (Frank Langella and George MacKay played in the film), the script is conceptual, inventive, unlike anything else and at the same time tells a completely human story (according to the actor, one of the best that he has read in own life).

His Ben Cash is raising his six children away from civilization – in the forests of Washington state. He himself teaches children languages, sciences and the rules of survival, and most importantly, allows them to freely develop physically and morally and challenge their own opinion, provided that criticism is supported by arguments. The idyll is broken by the death of his wife Leslie. The whole family must travel to the big world, resist its temptations of comfort (like a bath and heating) and face Grandpa Jack, who blames Ben for his daughter’s death.

“Prosperity Country” (2014)

1880 Danish military engineer Captain Gunnar Dinesen serves in Argentina, where he lives with his teenage daughter Inge. One night, she runs away from home with a local officer, Corto. The next morning, having discovered the disappearance of his daughter, Dinesen goes in search of her, but, traveling through deserted and homeless boundless spaces, he gets lost himself, falling into another reality. The film, in a sense, returned Mortensen to his childhood, part of which he spent in Argentina, won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

“Fall” (2020)

In 2020, Mortensen decided to direct the film from his own script. This is not an autobiography, but, according to Mortensen, was born as a result of reflections and memories of how his parents passed away. They first took the form of a story and then a screenplay. The protagonist of the film is the elderly Willis Peterson, played by Lance Henriksen, with whom Viggo worked on the western Appaloosa (2008).

The grouchy old man lives alone on the farm, and only a progressive illness forces him to accept the invitation of his adult son John (Mortensen) to live with him. However, Willis, despite John’s concern, refuses to accept his homosexuality and his adopted granddaughter.

“Fall”, shown on “Sundance”, tells about those very last days and words. In his debut, Mortensen invited Cronenberg, who played a small role as a proctologist.

“Crimes of the Future” (2022)

In their fourth and final film together, Cronenberg and Mortensen tell a story from the not-too-distant future, in which human bodies continue their bizarre evolution, creating new organs. Mortensen plays Saul Tenser, who has turned his body into art.

Together with their partner Caprice (Lea Seydoux), they arrange whole performances from operations to remove new organs. The governments of most countries do not support the idea of ​​adopting internal changes and keep records of them. However, in the new world, not everyone is so conservative. There are entire underground groups that see changes not as a random mutation, but as a response of the body to new conditions of existence. The premiere took place in May at the Cannes Film Festival.