Portrait published on September 29, 2008.
Yes, this is a fix. A third portrait of actor Viggo Mortensen in the space of three years, by the same person. This time, it started like a bet between girls: it’s a shame that I redo his portrait, besides, it’s very simple, from now on, every time or almost that he comes on sale in Paris, I will meet him and I will redo his portrait. Loop Viggo, Viggo for ever, Me, Viggo and I, etc. Laughter heard from the assembly. But the idea is gaining ground: what if the obsession with midinette opened the way to a progressive and evolving version of the portrait, when generally the “der” seizes a subject at a moment I, like the entomologist pinning the butterfly on the plank ? OK, it’s probably a way to ennoble, to intellectualize a fairly basic fantasy (meeting the obscure object of desire). But a fellow philosopher offers this lifeline: “At the end of the day, it can give a cubist portrait, with each episode bringing a point of view.” Knowing that the conditions will hardly vary: three quarters of an hour in a hotel. The colleague adds: “Good luck.” Fortunately, there is Viggo.
It’s a perfect model, for an apprentice cubist journalist: it’s very, very calm, so you can quietly observe it, turn around, without looking like a sick pig. He says, languidly slow: “Yeah, I’m pretty cool, and it takes a lot to turn me on. In case of disagreement, I am rather the one who will try to pacify things. But hey, if I really have to go, I’m going. In Appaloosa, the western that brings him back to Paris, he plays a sort of mercenary of order, who without batting an eyelid reduces the impudent to eternal silence. Don’t you want to understand? Bam bam, a thaw in the buffet, adios. Psychopath with a crystalline gaze. Impassivity, even extreme violence, runs through his entire filmography, starting with his major roles (Vietnam veteran in The Indian Runnerking in the Lord of the Ringsfalse father of a quiet family in A History of Violencereal-fake henchman of the Russian mafia in Shadow Promises). In the case the appaloosa, we gain in mystery (of the West, therefore). Mortensen is however decked out in a killer goatee, as if something had to be defused, his beauty perhaps. Thank God, none of that on the day of this third meeting. No crimped hair, no mustache like the previous times. Just him, tanned, which brings out the intriguing scar he has above his upper lip. It is a little replumped, it suits him well.
Viggo Mortensen says the film directed by Ed Harris is “like an autumn”, that one of the themes is the end: of a friendship, of an era (we are at the beginning of industrialization), of a way of life. But it is “always interesting to see how people react to change: some panic, others let themselves be carried away, still others seize the opportunity”. He’s flawless on promo, friend Mortensen. Always affable and motivated when his back seems assured since the Lord of the Rings. He says : “It is my duty.” Add, in a hint of a smile: “When the film is not good, you talk about something else, football for example.” His mate cup, which follows him everywhere, bears a sticker of Atletico San Lorenzo de Almagro, a club from Buenos Aires. We didn’t talk about football.
Usually, a pin with the United Nations logo (“Because it’s better than disunited, right?”) adorns the lapel of his jacket, this time it’s a brushed metal heart, “a prop from the movie”, filmed a year ago. We knew he was cerebral, thinking like a madman about the least of his roles, here he is also sentimental, Viggo, who lugs around relics. At the end of May, a report by New York Times on the set of The Roadadaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, described our hero in beards and rags night and day, pegged to his character as a survivor of the apocalypse.
When suddenly, this unexpected debate on the theme: does falling in love justify a change of life – this is what the character played by Ed Harris does in Appaloosa. Viggo the divorced says yes, suggests himself in a trance who needs the constant presence of the other. “And you, what do you think ? The question really interests me.” Viggo M. is therefore also suitable for banter. It was obviously the time to ask him, by the way, where are you, emotionally speaking? Wishing he would remain an icon well installed on his pedestal of inaccessibility, or lack of appropriateness, this crucial question remains a question mark.
We also forgot to ask him why he does his interviews in socks. He would probably have answered, “it’s more comfortable”. He has a side matter of fact absolutely soothing, the tall guy who regards you as a wise old man, with half-closed eyes, who replies about the horse or the piano: “I do it when I see one, that’s all.” Ditto for poetry, painting, photography: “I go back and forth.” Dilettantism? The website of Perceval Press, the publishing house he founded in 2002, attests to growing productivity. Rather, it seems that Mortensen has the innate fluidity, his activities feeding on each other, just as he can alternate languages in the same sentence, this time English and French (he lived in Canada) , but it could have been Spanish (he grew up in Argentina and Venezuela), or Danish (his mother is American, his father Danish, he was born in New York), or even Russian (he has learned for The promises). His photographs like his poems suggest a contemplative attention, zen with a melancholy tendency, with animist echoes, he says that Buddhism interests him, yes, “but I’m ready to believe in a lot of things anyway”. He just read a biography of Samuel Beckett: “Very interesting. I agree with him when he says that life is impossible, but you have to go on; Basically, it’s quite optimistic, moreover he continued to write until the end. He adds that “life is simple, it is people who complicate it”.
Citizen Mortensen will obviously vote for Obama, Viggo is perfect. He specifies : “All I hope is that the momentum it generates really drives Obama to change. It reminds me of the hope that Robert Kennedy raised in 1968.” During an evening organized a few months ago in Portland around the work of Howard Zinn, figure and historian of the American left (author of the best-selling A popular history of the United States), the actor in a “Make art, not war” T-shirt read a text by John Reed, journalist and communist activist who notably covered the Mexican and October revolutions.
A handshake, the promise of a photo book soon to be sent, and he resumed his merry way, airy, smart. The gazettes announced it in Edgar Allan Poe, in Sylvester Stallone’s biopic project, and in Lapérouse in the Vanikoro Frenchman Xavier Gens; there is also talk of a new collaboration with Cronenberg. See you soon Viggo.
Viggo Mortensen an 8 dates
October 20, 1958 Born in New York.
1991 The Indian Runner by Sean Penn.
2000-2003 Trilogy the Lord of the Rings.
2002 Founds the publishing house Perceval Press.
2005 A History of violenceby David Cronenberg.
2007 Shadow Promisesthe Cronenberg.
July 2008 output ofAlatriste In France.
October 1, 2008 output ofAppaloosaby and with Ed Harris.