Plague and panic in 1870s Wisconsin: inside the apocalyptic western A Prayer for the Dying

It took 17 years to hit the screen, is based on a 1999 novel and is set in 1870, but A Prayer for the Dying couldn’t be more 2020s if it stole your job and replaced it with AI. 

A doomy, apocalyptic western set in Friendship, Wisconsin, writer-director Dara Van Dusen’s adaptation of Stewart O’Nan’s book layers on trauma in compelling, unsettling and horrifying ways. After a woman found ranting in a field on the outskirts of town is examined by local physician Doc (John C. Reilly) at the request of sheriff, pastor and civil-war veteran Jacob (Johnny Flynn), it’s discovered she has diphtheria. The piece intensifies, and the bodies pile up, as the disease spreads. The pair debate whether to put the town into quarantine while wildfires encroach and Jacob contends with nightmares from the American Civil War – which ended five years previously – and keeping his family safe, especially given that his wife Marta (Kristine Kujath Thorp) has a new baby.

With its pervasive climate of fear, Covid-reminiscent disease and climate-related woe, it’s no stretch to compare the on-screen action to current wider global political and social concerns, particularly those of contemporary America. We sat down with Van Dusen and Flynn the day after the film’s world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival to chew over their film’s contemporary echoes, its photo-book inspiration and Reilly’s acting technique.

Lou Thomas: Dara, to what extent did the pandemic help crystalise your ideas on how to make the film?

Dara Van Dusen: It’s wild to have started this just over a decade ago when it felt so irrelevant and distant that it was difficult for people to relate to that type of story. Then, it suddenly became all of our reality. I was at home quarantined with a two-year old, looking at the page, like, “This is all too personal.” But the beauty of it is when you work for that long on something, it’s gonna evolve and change. The world forces you to really look at it and say, “Now I know what this feels like.”

Some have written about it being a Covid allegory. Is there anything even bigger and broader at play?

Van Dusen: What I loved about the novel, originally, is that it is about these huge issues that are relevant now and relevant then: our distrust of leaders, our complete loyalty to leaders; climate change, having no control over this beast that we coexist with – which is nature and environment; disease, faith, morality, ego. We’re exploring it, swimming in the grey zone. I don’t have the answers. I would argue nobody does. But I think we’re watching one man try to figure out the answers, and there is panic, paranoia and a self-reflection involved that I’m fascinated by.

Johnny Flynn: Even since we made it, the level of xenophobia in parts of the world has ramped up so significantly. There’s also this shift from big government to small government, which is what’s happening in the film; communities left to fend for themselves. I’m thinking of Minneapolis challenging the policy of the ICE [the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement] rollout. There’s the stand-off scene with the sheriff from the next town, at the end. It’s so pertinent. It’s crazy – you started this journey 17 years ago and then all these things had become more and more about now.

Johnny, there’s a lot of vulnerability and trauma to Jacob. What was the key emotion or idea that helped you get to the heart of playing him? 

Flynn: Fundamentally, he’s somebody who’s compromised. That’s his starting point, because he has this family and a young baby and they live slightly outside the town. That geography is quite important in the story because he’s there thinking about his flock, and he’s so archetypally a leader – or he’s trying to be.

They compromise each other, because he says to Doc, “What do I tell my congregation?” He’s having to take advice from a doctor about a disease that he doesn’t understand and then he’s trying to implement a law about a lockdown. He’s also trying to do the thing that is morally right in his heart, the right thing for his wife and his daughter who he loves. None of these things can work together. That’s the problem.

Dara, how was Michael Lesy’s 1973 photo-book Wisconsin Death Trip an inspiration?

Van Dusen: It is an amazingly dark, strange, moving photobook. It was an amateur newspaper photographer in Wisconsin in 1870. Michael Lesy found his photos. Everything was framed in a way that made you feel so uneasy because it was a little bit incorrect, but there was a confidence in its incorrectness. He paired it with newspaper clippings: ‘Diphtheria spreads’, ‘Child dies’, ‘Hysterical woman wanders into town’, ‘Locked-up man burns own house’. It was the grim reality that became so palpable, real and overwhelming – so gothic, but also a reality that wasn’t that long ago. That book does an amazing job of creating a full universe of what that felt like.

Dara, aside from yourself writing and directing, the film’s producer, composer and DP are all women. That shouldn’t be something we remark upon, but having women in so many key positions on a film is relatively uncommon. Does this bring anything different to film?

Van Dusen: You want to work with the best people, and we had the best people, but it absolutely does. We experience the world differently. We’re different. Also, it is a really manly film. It’s about a relationship between two men primarily, and it’s always gonna be a different take, because [as women] we’re a little bit on the outside.

But the amazing part is that in front of the camera, there’s really one woman, Kristine, and to have us all behind the camera, she’s alone there with the weight of showing what it was for all women. The anger, the panic, the overwhelmingness of being a woman in 1870 in that position. One woman representing a whole gender.

When we were in development there were moments of, “There are so many women behind the camera, and the one in front is in the kitchen. What is happening?” Now, you don’t know, Kristine. She’s not in the kitchen. She’s about to explode in the kitchen. But women were in the kitchen and it’s really important to show that – they were forced to be inside. There were feelings that came with that. And that matters, to show reality.

Johnny, your main screen partner is John C. Reilly. What does he bring to the proceedings that’s unique to him?

Flynn: He does a lot of comedy, but there’s always an eeriness to what you’d call his non-comedic roles. There’s a mystery to John that I think is so great for Doc. When I watch him in the film, I feel like he’s playing a game of chess with himself. He’s trying to figure out how to navigate the situation. He’s older than Jacob. Jacob’s the leader, implementing the law, but Doc is really the one he has to defer to, so he has this wisdom and power.

What I found to be so touching about him is that he is such a generous actor off screen. I found that to be so gentle – listening to me and whoever is in front of the camera, seeing what’s happening. He knows his co-stars so well, he’s changing his performance behind the camera to get us all where we need to be and walking away like none of it happened. It’s beautiful selflessness. 

A Prayer for the Dying is backed by the BFI National Lottery Filmmaking Fund. It received its world premiere at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival.