Viggo Mortensen writes, produces, directs, does the music and stars in Friday’s “The Dead Don’t Hurt” – but he never intended it to be a Western.

“It just worked out that way,” Mortensen, 65, said by phone of his classic horseback saga where free spirit Vivienne (Vicky Krieps) meets and marries Holger (Mortensen), a rancher. He enlists for the Civil War, leaving her and their son to tend their isolated spread.  Bad men are nearby and do very bad things.

“Instead of writing a Western, I started writing a story about a woman who was independent and strong. A free-thinking person. I decided to place her in the 19th century — to create the most tension for her as an independent woman. The West in the 19th century is a place where society was fairly lawless and dominated by a few relatively unscrupulous men who were not averse to using violence.

“I thought that would create a greater obstacle for her. That’s how it ended up being Western.

“I like Westerns,” Mortensen added. “I grew up riding horses and I’ve been in some Westerns. For this I really enjoyed the research and the preparation done with my team.”

While there all kinds of Westerns, “Our story is different in that there’s a flesh and blood, relatively ordinary woman at the center of it who’s independent and strong willed. That’s different.

“I wanted to make a movie that looked and felt like the best of the classic Westerns. Not draw a lot of attention to how the camera sees the characters in the landscapes. Just something clean, elegant, simple. And historically accurate in terms of the language and the details we see onscreen.”

Also unusual about “Dead Don’t Hurt” is its time-shifting narrative. Without any indication one setting, like a flower garden being tended, segues into a years-earlier incident. “I wrote it that way basically.”

As for Mortensen’s influences, “I’ve been fortunate over decades to work for some really good directors, Jane Campion, Ron Howard, David Cronenberg. No matter how different they might be as people or their movies might be, they all have in common a couple of things.

“I’ve learned from them over and over three things: You can never prepare enough for a shoot. You can never communicate enough with your cast and crew.

“And it’s really important to make it clear to everyone on your team that their ideas are welcome. That you’re not threatened by them. That no matter how well thought out your plan of attack is, a good idea can come from anywhere. It’s smart to take that into account and not feel in any way threatened.”

“The Dead Don’t Hurt” opens May 31