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My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)

Director: Werner Herzog

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From Time Out Online

Reviewed at the 2009 Venice Film Festival

Swiftly atoning for all sins committed with his supremely duff ‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’, Werner Herzog heroically leaps from the ridiculous to the sublime with David Lynch-produced ‘My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done’, the surprise competition film at this year’s Venice Film Festival. And what a surprise it was.

Though Lynch’s participation gives ample idea of what to expect from this apocryphal slice of tongue-in-cheek Americana, it remains a Herzog film through-and-through. It's a self-reflexive and puckish essay on the roots of insanity which bursts with references to the director’s world-beating back catalogue. While recent films like ‘Grizzly Man’ and ‘Encounters at the End of the World’ were about the indifference of the natural world towards mankind, ‘My Son, My Son…’ chooses to explore the similarly chaotic and unfathomable nature of the human mind.

The title refers to the final words spoken by Lynch regular Grace Zabriskie as her mentally disturbed son, Brad (Michael Shannon – sensational), runs her through with an antique blade. Holing himself up in mater’s electric pink bungalow (nb, she has a flamingo fixation) with a loaded shotgun, the story of how he came to be trapped in this tight spot is revealed by a series of increasingly bizarre flashbacks narrated by his fiancée (Chloë Sevigny) and his Germanic acting coach (Udo Kier). Yet, Herzog is not particularly interested in the strained relationship between Brad and his mother, choosing instead to piece together the warped fragments of his now dangerously impulsive mind and ask how a person could be driven to such acts.

Though the film displays the intellectual rigour (and not to mention the playfulness and humour) of a Charlie Kaufman script, one group who should be particularly responsive to it are fans of Lynch’s seminal TV mystery serial, ‘Twin Peaks’. Not only are there distinct echoes of Laura Palmer in Shannon’s fire-and-brimstone whackjob whose dark past is pieced together in a tapestry of third party testimony, but there are also delicate nods to the some of the series’ smaller pleasures, such as when Willem Dafoe’s chirpy police detective makes an explicit and protracted apology for not giving his witnesses any coffee.

If it sounds totally loopy, that’s because it is. Yet the reason why the film works brilliantly is that Herzog anchors the loopiness in a recognisable reality. There’s little doubt that the film will madden those not willing to tangle with some of its more lunatic concepts. For everyone else, it will sit cosily next to ‘Aguirre…’, ‘Fitzcaraldo’, ‘Kaspar Hauser’ and the rest as a dazzling and utterly distinctive art movie that may be difficult to fathom but richly rewards those willing to dig beneath its shimmering and oblique exterior.

Author: David Jenkins 2009-09-07 09:47:33

Time Out Online Venice Film Festval 2009

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My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

Cast & crew

Director: Werner Herzog

Cast: Michael Shannon, Grace Zabriskie, Chloë Sevigny, Willem Dafoe, Brad Dourif, Udo Kier full cast

Genre(s): Drama

Duration: 90 mins

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