My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

"It's all a little confusing." No kidding. When you get a movie that says "David Lynch presents a Werner Herzog film", you know you'll be in for some weirdness. Though by the film's end I was under the impression, perhaps from being such a geek about both director's work (I've seen all of Lynch, most of Herzog) that it was more the Bavarian's doing and that Lynch wanted his name with it. Which is fine, but fans will find their interpretations as they will. For me it's a continuation not so much of a crime genre story like Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans, but of Herzog's oeuvre in general about man's plunge and practical capture by madness due to nature (i.e. Peruvian jungle). And for fans of the director, it should be quite an event to be able to possible walk from one theater in NYC or LA playing Port of Call New Orleans to see another playing My Son My Son.

And yet, for all of the good stuff going on in this film, I might be more inclined to recommend the crazy-but-lucid head-trip of Port of Call over the hit-or-miss affair of My Son My Son. In this case we get the story of Brad, a sometimes-actor who takes a cue from a Sophocles play he's acting in to kill his mother one morning with a sword he used as a prop for the play. As the cops surround his house (not knowing that he really has flamingos as hostages, naturally, named after Secretaries in the Johnson administration), his girlfriend and play director expound about his decline in his mental capacity. Some of this comes from his unhealthy relationship with his black jello making mother, and some of it from his disillusioned trip to Peru, surrounded by health freaks. Or, perhaps, something else triggered it that Herzog intentionally leaves a mystery.

Which, the mystery part I mean, would be perfectly fine. But the problem comes in the screenplay, and some of the acting, both counts that from time to time have given trouble in Herzog's work. The set-ups of the flashbacks are often unconvincing, and there's a disconnect I felt between Michael Shannon's character and his girlfriend played by Chloe Sevigny (I don't often beg for explanation, but really, why are they together, how did they meet, WTF man). And, sad to say for someone who always admires the weirdness, it almost goes to extremes into becoming meandering, a facet of Herzog's work that comes up from time to time, such as Even Dwarfs Started Small or Invincible.

But oh, such parts that make up this whole! When Herzog is able to really relay to a willing audience about Shannon's frame of mind through images, and how to construct the shots and landscapes of San Diego city or a Calgary interior "tunnel" or just random images like a piano playing by itself, it's truly wonderful. Hell, we even get images I hadn't recalled since Fata Morgana, where he has his characters intentionally (ala Brecht) stand in a frozen pose as if it's a freeze-frame, with eerie music accompanying them, and every so often you'll see an eye move or control of the body start to waver. What kind of balance is there for this character, or for the story about him? That the cinematography from Peter Zeitlinger is top-notch and surprising also should go without saying.

And yet saying it's somewhat of a disappointment from such a massive genius of cinema- and whether you like him or hate him Herzog's place in modern movies is wildly unique- I hope would mean as a compliment. Like, say, Synecdoche, New York, it's got incredible sights and moments, things of this world we haven't seen in a film in a while (or maybe ever) like ostrich farms and a 1920's gospel song put over cops with their hands up in a hostage scene. I just wish it didn't get TOO weird for me.

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.

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.

A compelling look into one man's slow decent into madness. Brilliantly directed and featuring a stellar cast, - including Willem Dafoe and Micheal Shannon - this film is both horrible and fascinating. It concerns a man whom, after acting in and becoming obsessed with a Greek play, chooses to do that which his character does; kill his mother with a sword used as a prop in the production. Although it cites David Lynch as producer, it's unclear what the director's actual involvement was with the film. The viewer gets the idea that Herzog is more paying homage to Lynch then anything. Watching this film is like watching a train wreck; it feels awkward and odd, but for some reason, you can't look away. I'd recommend this film for any Herzog or Lynch buff (the reference to 'Blue Velvet' is worth it) and anyone who likes bizarre, horror films. Otherwise, the average movie-goer might find this film pretentious and boring.

And where is the answer, you might ask too. But then again, if you have seen at least one Herzog movie, you might know, that it isn't that easy with him. Michael Shannon gets a deserved major role (he was great in The Runaways for example). Other great actors fill in the rest of the cast. It's a great cast overall, even in the smallest parts. Which goes to show you, that Herzog indeed has something fascinating to offer for an actor or actress.

And the movie is very complicated with rich characters and strange events and turns. The narrative being either it's stronghold or weak spot (depending on your own feelings towards this movie). It is difficult to describe what I felt watching this. On one hand I was amazed, by what he did, on the other hand I was wondering if I really wanted to watch all that ... But again, that's Herzog for you.