An email exchange with Viggo Mortensen on the subjects of hope, endurance, and human nature.
Originally appeared in Los Angeles Magazine December, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
He has been nominated for an Oscar (for the 2007 mystery Eastern Promises) and was declared a bona fide sex symbol (after his turn in the 2005 crime drama A History of Violence). He’s starred in three of the biggest-grossing movies of all time (The Lord of the Rings trilogy in 2001, 2002, and 2003). But Viggo Mortensen has always been motivated more by collaboration than celebrity. His new film, The Road, is an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about survival in a postapocalyptic world of cannibalism and other unimaginable horrors. As “The Man,” Mortensen navigates this devastated landscape with his son (played by 11-year-old newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee). We exchanged e-mails with the actor, poet, publisher (of the L.A.-based Perceval Press), and polyglot (he speaks Danish and Spanish, among other languages) on the subjects of hope, endurance, and human nature.
Hi Viggo,
The Road is true to McCarthy’s novel in that the nature of the cataclysmic event that has ruined the planet is never explained. As you constructed your character of “The Man,” though, you must have filled in that blank for yourself. Was it a comet, or did humankind bring the end of the world upon itself?
It does not really matter, because the character cannot do anything about it. I think that numerous things happened—fires, floods, drought, earthquakes (which the book and movie refer to) as well as fighting that led to the destruction of the power grids. Once things went wrong, there was no more Internet, phone, TV, radio, so it was not possible to know what really had happened and was continuing to happen all over the place. As when we have had blackouts, big snowstorms, fires, floods like those following Hurricane Katrina, or even as a reaction to events like those of 11 September, 2001, in New York and Washington, D.C., many people tend to isolate. General ignorance and wild, paranoid speculation tend to take over.
You’ve had a lot of physically demanding roles, from sword fighting in the LOTR trilogy to horseback riding in Hidalgo to wrestling naked in Eastern Promises. But The Road seems to be in a class by itself. How much weight did you lose to play a man starving to death?
I am not exactly sure. Enough to be credible as the character. Maybe 30 pounds or so. It was a basic requirement of the story that I not look well fed, so I simply ate less. That was not the hardest part, though. Nor was the hardest part the physical endurance test Kodi and I took part in by working in the cold, wet environments. The hardest part for both of us was the emotional journey, being exposed on the inside.
How did you prepare yourself emotionally to imagine the end of the world?
I’ve always thought that the end of the world, the end of me, of anything, can happen at any time, just as the sun always goes down at some point each day. It is natural, and not something to fear so much as be aware of and, when possible and appropriate, struggle against.
This may sound odd, but The Road had unexpected echoes of WALL-E, last year’s animated movie about an Earth used up and left behind by humans. Though WALL-E was clearly aimed at a different audience, both movies highlight the tenacity of love and the importance of even small gestures of kindness. Did you see WALL-E?
Yes, I did. I get your point. Had not thought of that. Thanks!
Were there any other movies you thought about as you prepared for this role?
For inspiration with regard to my understanding of Kodi’s character and regarding the environment, I looked at some of Tarkovsky’s work—Ivan’s Childhood and Stalker, for example. I also had another look at Sokurov’s Mother and Son and Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc for the emotional truth of the performances and cinematography. I listened to certain music, looked at photographs, read certain kinds of poems. I also spoke with people who live in the street in different cities, when they were willing to speak with me.
