My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

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

source: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

I, like many reviewing this film, are a BIG fan of David Lynch and Werner Herzog. I was greatly disappointed by this non-event of a film. Maybe it would have fared better as 1/2 hour television drama, but after an hour and 33 minutes, I walked away with an empty feeling. This movie never takes off nor goes anywhere. I'm saddened that two film geniuses got together and created this mediocre movie. The film looks good, the acting is competent, but what could have been a fascinating character study turns out to be an empty story. Lynch and Herzog always capture the attention of fans and critics, but this one slipped under the radar for good reason.

Perhaps this film defines me as an average movie-goer but it was my third trip to an art-house cinema (Cineclub de Tavira, Portugal) in a week and by far the least satisfying, and I am usually a fan of both David Lynch and Werner Herzog. I cannot recall a film with so many unsympathetic characters since W. C. Fields's heyday, and at least in his pictures they were played that way for laughs. Herzog draws some good performances out of a talented cast but the story, such as it is, hardly extends beyond a ten to fifteen minute short, in fact the trailer that was shown the week before the screening contained all of the film's most significant action. The most disappointing element of all was that the S.W.A.T. team does not shoot the lead character to pieces in the last scene. By then I might even have been ready to turn their weapons on myself.

Marcello Mastroianni Marlon Brando ETC All the greats go crazy. I was pleased to see the main character succeed in this effort. Michael Shannon is insane. I have no reference to other things he has done but My Son has to be it. The film is pure spectacle. It allows you interpretation and forces your engagement at the same time. It does all the things it should do. I like Herzog's quote about working with the RED as the only negative to this work is image quality. "It's an immature camera created by computer people who do not have a sensibility or understanding for the value of high-precision mechanics, which has a 200-year history." Just don't blame it on Zeitlinger the DP. What a hipster concoction Lynch, Herzog, Chloe, Dafoe, Zabriskie and Uncle Teds Ostrich Farm are. I'm all for it.

"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.

I wish there were a way to vote 0 out of ten because there is finally a film worthy of that. I would rather have someone beat me on my skull for an hour and a half than have sit through this. 5 minutes in you'll think it's interesting. 20 minutes in you'll think it sucks. 40 minutes in you can't believe you're still watching it. I actually sat through to the end hoping for an M. Night Shyamalan surprise to somehow partially save the day. It was worse to actually see the end, I could have imagined endings that were much better than that. I liked the actors. I like Dafoe and Shannon both a lot. This must have looked really good on paper. The man who reviewed this at 10 stars must have been the director, the review is so long it is like an apology. By far the worst movie I have ever seen in my life.

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.

There is a world where acting skills are not required to make movies, in fact, in Werner Herzog's world, actors with acting skills are obviously dissuaded to use them. I've always liked William Dafoe. It was his name among the cast that made me decide to watch this film to give him another chance after Lars Von Trier's Antichrist debacle, but I fear I'll have to be very cautious with Mr. Dafoe's future work. This film is boring and stagnant. From all the takes of all the scenes, I'm sure only the ones with the worst acting performances were used. It is a long succession of uninspired scenes lacking any highs or lows, with actors who are clearly sorry that they committed to doing the film. None of them ever credibly interact, and they read their lines like an eight year old would a memorized poem beyond his or her understanding in front of a classroom. All the characters are one-dimensional and there is no real explanation given why Mrs. McCullum was killed. From the outset, her son is notably deranged, but that's about it and the rest is hubbub. To quote Mr. Herzog; "Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism." This film has the intelligence of a flea circus and may be many things, but it is not art although a rookie attempt was made to emulate David Linch-like visualizations, and it is most definitively not an academic descent into a killers mind. Spare yourself this agitation...

How can someone waste money and some great talent on something like this goes beyond my comprehension. I can only image the kind of mental state that takes to write, convince someone to put a project together and actually get some very decent talent to end up with something so monotone, nonsensical that for the first time in my life it makes me feel what a lot of other reviewers say here. I want my time back, as this was a completely waste of time. I'm sure that everyone involved in this project wish they never accept that check, or they are smart enough that no one will watch something so bad that probably it will just pass unnoticed on their careers. The best part is the end (as usual in horrible flicks), when you get to realize that the suffering is over and you don't have to wait more for storyline, since they have none.