My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

Directed by Werner Herzog, produced by David Lynch - quite a lot for any film to live up to? The question is does "My Son, My Son..." meet expectations? The answer is probably not. Although it's an interesting misfire. Although the film was directed by Herzog it often displays Lynch's hallmarks; the constant foreboding music humming low in the soundtrack, the moments of quirky humour, the mannered dialogue and the weird characters, most notably Lynch regular Grace Zabriskie as the mother. It's almost as though Herzog is intentionally paying homage to his fellow left-field director, while incorporating some of his own personal concerns such as a crazy central character, weird animals, dangerous nature and, most specifically of all, a river trip in Peru! The film is like a collision of two of the most fascinating film directors of the past forty years. But for some reason, it never truly clicks together, which is of course enormously unfortunate.

The film is basically about a psychologically troubled man called McCullum who one day kills his mother with a sword. He holes up in his house with two hostages while a detective arrives on the scene and talks to his two closest friends, his fiancé and theatrical director. From here we are told various things in flashback about McCullum, while still observing events in the hostage situation.

The set up is quite promising really. There is potential for an interesting story. And the film does have some good oddball actors at its disposal, like Zabriskie, Willem Dafoe, Brad Dourif and Udo Kier. But maybe Michael Shannon is a weak link in the central role, as it is very difficult to empathise with him. This may not be entirely Shannon's fault of course as the character he is playing is somewhat hard to like; nevertheless, Shannon is often too over-the-top and it becomes tiring. Funnily enough Nicolas Cage was also completely OTT in his central performance in Herzog's recent Bad Lieutenant but for some reason he was brilliant – so go figure. Anyway, for whatever reason, the characters never really draw us in so that we care enough. On a more positive note, the film looks great and has quite a lot of moments of the surreal, often humorously so.

This is a film only for those who appreciate Herzog or Lynch at their weirdest. To not put too fine a point on it, it's not for everyone. Not an unqualified success by any means but bizarre enough for some respect.

This movie -if one call that crap "a movie" that is- is an outright insult to the art of cinema. Sound and songs are awfully annoying, acting is way down below zero...

Some psychopatic killer makes a story eh? Please gimme a break! Any wacky teenager would make a better movie out of this story.. (When I say story, I apologize to all those who appreciate a real story.. Sorry this crap doesn't even have a story)

I have serious concerns about the mental health of those who could grade this crap as a "masterpiece". I guess those people must get some professional help.. NOW ... not any minute later

OK, maybe you have to be a Herzog fan to get this one. In its small and quiet way it's a classic Herzogian study of visionary madness and obsession, played out this time with mordant irony against the blandness of suburban San Diego. Brad, a brooding man-child who lives with his mom, gradually goes nuts, saying and doing increasingly unhinged (and funny) things to his clueless loved ones, played by goofy character actors like Udo Kier, Grace Zabriskie and Chloe Sevigny. Willem Dafoe plays the equally clueless detective called in when Brad, inevitably, explodes in a single (off-screen) act of violence. All the usual Herzog flourishes are here, though often played small: odd animals, oddball people, grimly threatening nature, useless bureaucratic procedures, civilization and its hapless inhabitants struggling to maintain order and etiquette in the face of the world's natural madness, violence and chaos. It's a wacky, Herzogian comedy of manners, very much in the tradition of many of his films from Dwarfs through Stroszek to Grizzly Man. If you like Herzog you'll probably like it; if not, maybe not.

Roger Ebert said about My Son that it "confounds all convention and denies all expected pleasures", and this is partially true because there's a murder but we know who did it and we know where he is, right across the street, and the hostage situation that develops outside the suspect's place is perfunctory at best (which means Willem Dafoe as the homicide detective has very little to do here, no this is Mike Shannon's film), but in place of the tired conventions of the detective movie Herzog invents new pleasures, strange and mystifying and sometimes completely mindbending and hilarious, like the mental image of a midget on a baby horse being chased by a 45 pound chicken that is taller than both rider and horse, an idea for a commercial Brad Dourif explains wide-eyed with fascination, but a commercial to what how should he know!

This is an amazing film on the poetics of madness using the real story of a man who slew his mother with a sword to tell us about absurdity in the world. It's like jumping over the fence of an insane asylum to mingle with the inmates and pay attention to what they have to say because there might be truth there, and if there isn't they always make up the best of stories. Herzog's most famous characters have been romantic madmen indeed, and Brad McCulloch fits right next to Cobra Verde the slavetrader bandit, he's the cynic who rebels and leaves his rebellion incomplete, without a grand message for the world. He goes rafting in Peru then gives up on it, tells his friends he won't go to the sweat lodge where the 104 year old shaman smokes Kool cigarettes and reads Hustler, that he wants to stun his inner growth and become a Muslim. He berates his hippie friend who meditates on a rock facing the river, and tells him to open his eyes, reality is around him.

As with other Herzog films, I like this so much because it celebrates insane human behaviour, monomania and folly, dogged human pursuit for transcendence against a yawning futile universe. I like how this is punctuated by some amazing images; like the dinner scene at Brad's house with his girlfriend and mother, where all three of them simply stop moving and freeze in position. People who love to hate David Lynch, will find plenty of room for maneuvre here to call My Son strange for its own sake, nonsensical and pretentious. In a meeting between Herzog and Lynch before the film was made, they both expressed a desire for, in Herzog's words, "a return to essential filmmaking" with small budgets, good stories, and the best actors available. This is all that, except in the way very few people can make it.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is a complex, hypnotic drama starring Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, and Chloe Sevigny. The film starts with homicide detective Havenhurst (Dafoe), and his partner Detective Vargas (Michael Peña) being called in to investigate a recent murder. After scanning the scene for the basic details, Dafoe and Peña are made aware that the main suspect, Brad McCullum (Shannon) is across the street. After making contact with McCullum, the situation turns hostile when McCullum declares that he has two hostages.

To help facilitate the process of capturing McCullum, two close relations are interviewed. His fiancée Ingrid (Sevigny) and his former theatre director and close friend Lee Meyers (Udo Kier). Each person gives their own history about McCullum to Havenhurst in order to try and figure out what would make him kill this woman. The most disturbing park, aside from slaying the woman with a sword, is that the woman is also his mother.

The stage is set for Herzog to investigate the psyche of an intelligent, deranged man. The film is based on a true story where an actor who was performing in a Ancient Greek play about a man who kills his mother to avenge his father's death, does just that and kills his own mother. Herzog and fellow screenwriter Herbert Golder interviewed the actual man in an attempt to try and tell this remarkable story accurately. At the screening of the film, Golder said that the man was highly intelligent. I can't imagine what would posses someone to do this hideous act, but this movie tries to put together some sort of rationale as to what would lead a person to do this.

I thought that Shannon's character would be the most interesting, but after thinking it over I found that the other people in his life were even more peculiar. How could they put up with his radical behavior and outlandish thinking? Ingrid says that two years prior Brad embarked on a rafting trip to the Amazon with some of his friends. He was the only one who survived. After he returned Ingrid said he was different. Very different.

Why did she stay with him for so long when clearly he was mentally unstable? Why did Meyers, the director of the Greek play, put up with him that long? These people are more intriguing than a man who clearly is not all there in the head for one reason or another. I had a hard time getting past these questions.

What helped was the entrancing camera work and film composition that Herzog put together along with cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger. The slow tracking shots along with eye popping sets and locations create this feeling of foreboding. The eerie score composed by Ernst Reijseger, whose score is heard almost entirely throughout, gives the film a much needed boost by ingering in the background.

Shannon might have been a little over the top or under the top. It's hard to describe. He played it kind of flat but to a point where it was a bit much. I think he is really stepping into his own as a serious actor and roles like this are good for him. Very brooding and psychologically complex. The rest of the cast does a decent job, but nothing too dramatic, with the exception of Brad Dourif in the small role of Shannon' uncle. He plays a fiery ostrich farmer who does not approve of the lifestyle his nephew has chosen.

There is always something to like about Herzog's movies and sometimes there are things I very much dislike. I think this one needed a little more boost in the action to keep the audience fully interested, but there is still something here to take away.