My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
A Film by Werner Herzog
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 (720x480) | 01:31:08 | 7,67 Gb
Audio: English AC3 5.1/2.0 @ 448/192 Kbps | Subs: English SDH, Spanish
Genre: Art-house, Crime, Drama
A Film by Werner Herzog
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 (720x480) | 01:31:08 | 7,67 Gb
Audio: English AC3 5.1/2.0 @ 448/192 Kbps | Subs: English SDH, Spanish
Genre: Art-house, Crime, Drama
The first collaboration between legendary filmmakers David Lynch and Werner Herzog, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is loosely based on the true story of a San Diego man whose mystifying experiences lead him to commit a shocking act of matricide.
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I like to think of San Diego – which is, if I haven’t mentioned this before, my hometown – as a serene paradise of unmatched beauty. We’re a city surprisingly rich in history: the landing site of European explorer Juan Cabrillo’s first voyage to California, San Diego also served as one of the key cities during the Spanish, and later Mexican rule of the North American West Coast, and, according to Anchorman Ron Burgundy, San Diego is notable for being named after a whales… well, you know the rest. Every summer an orgasmic explosion of geekly delights descends upon the city with the annual Comic-Con (it is, simply, heaven for nerds like me). Our weathermen have the easiest jobs in the world; winter, spring, summer or fall, it’s almost always a balmy 74º. The landscape is, in my totally biased opinion, gorgeous and offers much variety (the saying goes something like: you’re five minutes from the beach, an hour from the mountains and two hours from the desert.) The crime rate is low – the ninth safest city in the US according to Forbes – and the pollution and traffic congestion even lower.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
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Now that my unapologetic tourism blurb is over, I should also mention that my crime statistic is a little misleading. Certainly, San Diego is no Detroit, but it’s also not a Mayberry either. We have our share of weird, violent crimes, and in some cases said crimes are weirder than you’d expect. The most notable is probably The Heaven's Gate suicides that occurred in the upper-class suburb of Rancho Santa Fe in 1997. Cult leader Marshall Applewhite convinced 38 others to kill themselves – while dressed in full black sportswear – so that their souls could board a spacecraft that was trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet, and that they alone would be saved from the coming evil. Clearly, Applewhite was insane. Although only eight at the time, I remember the news stories and the footage of NIKE clad feet poking out from blanket covered stretchers and bunk beds. The cult deaths received mass airtime on the national news, and it seemed to be a topic of much discussion for months on end.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
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I say all this because although, far less well known, a Pacific Beach matricide committed in 1979 by a UCSD graduate student who was also a local actor whom received critical acclaim, is just a odd (if not even more so) and doubly as chilling as The Heaven's Gate suicides, and, most importantly, it provides the loose base for Werner Herzog’s new film “My Son My Son, What Have Ye Done”, produced by none-other than David Lynch. Although I have no memory of this gruesome murder – how could I have, I was negative ten at the time – my parents remember it vividly. Or so they tell me. A promising genius stabs his mother to death with an antique saber in a neighbor’s home. He stabbed her 19 times. But… why? Well, Herzog’s film sort of explains that – it certainly isn’t concerned with the who, or the how, both of which are revealed as cold hard facts in the first 10 minutes of the film – if in an oddly roundabout way that takes us to exotic places like Peru, back and fourth several months, and into glimpses of various scenes from Brad McCullum’s (Michael Shannon) life. The simple, and frankly only, answer is that McCullum is insane. This film then is an exploration of his descent into madness.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
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As “My Son My Son…” opens, a SDPD detective (Willem Defoe) and his rookie partner (Michael Peña) receive a call over their radio, directing them to the crime scene where a 30-something year old Point Loma man killed his mother for reasons unknown. When they arrive, the detective and his partner begin interviewing friends, neighbors and family members about why Brad – who has holed himself up in his mothers flamingo-pink house with two unseen hostages – might have done such a terrible thing. These interviews are blended into flashbacks – fragments of McCullum’s past – that don’t particularly explain why he did what he did, but more simply that this man had cracked long, long ago. Interspersed between the various interviews and flashbacks is a dry depiction of a police stand off and hostage negotiation between Brad, the detectives and later, the SWAT team, which Herzog seems almost completely uninterested in (although he does have some fun with Peña’s rookie cop character, who thinks he’s the star of an action film. It’s quite humorous and allows the director to almost deconstruct audience expectations).
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
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This is not a docudrama, nor a true crime story that is utterly faithful to the real life murder case. Herzog estimates that the script, which he co-wrote with his frequent collaborator Herb Golder, is 75% to 80% original. McCullum is a heightened version of Mark Yavorsky, the real killer. Many of the other characters, including Brad’s girlfriend (Chloë Sevigny) and the director of the Greek play in which he’d been cast (Udo Kier), are amalgams of many people known to Yavorsky. Brad’s trip to Peru is almost entirely made up (although it is true that Yavorsky spent some time in the Middle East and it’s there that he is thought to have “changed”, in a very similar fashion as the interviewees recount of McCullum’s trip to South America), as is the uncomfortable relationship with Brad’s overbearing mother, played to such wonderfully eerie effect by the always exceptional Grace Zabriskie.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
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I’ve read that quite a few viewers were upset that “My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done” lacks the sort of Lynchian flair that they expected – which is perhaps why the film has such mediocre ratings (6.6/10 on IMDB, and an almost dead even 50% on Rottentomatoes) – but I have this to say: not only is that claim unfounded because Lynch’s touch, however minor, is most definitely felt (a scene involving a midget evokes thoughts of “Twin Peaks” (1990-1991) for instance), but, also remember that the “Blue Velvet” (1984) director did not write “My Son, My Son…”, nor did he direct it. He was simply the executive producer and while tiny stylistic flourishes of the man’s input can be seen, and a few of his familiar chosen-faces noticed – the aforementioned Grace Zabriskie and Willem Defoe, and the supremely underrated and not previously discussed Brad Dourif (who, if only in the film for less than ten minutes, absolutely steals the show) to name a few – this is Werner Herzog show, and mostly his show alone.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
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The German director weaves an admittedly nontraditional narrative together with such haphazard craftsmanship that the film is disconcerting, but unsurprisingly cool. Forgoing the more standardized practice of shooting coverage (multiple cameras, at multiple angles), Herzog and his long time cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger stage the negotiation and interview scenes so that a single camera, often handheld or stead-i-cam captures the action in raw, unedited long takes. The effect allows for a bit of spontaneity from the actors (all of whom seem to thrive on the seat-of-your pants approach), but it is also made even more jarring, by the fractured jump cuts to the flashbacks.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
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“My Son, My Son…” is a strange film not doubt. Characters look into the camera seemingly frozen in time, like a photograph, and Herzog holds these shots for what seems like minutes on end (in reality they are thirty to sixty seconds at most, but still quite peculiar), but, on the whole the film is not as incoherent or as “out there” as you might think, and strange as it may be, it’s also quite focused (if not in a traditional sense). In fact the plot – what little of one that there is – is quite ordinary, and at it’s most basic, the structure of the film isn’t all that unorganized or listless. The picture is fragmented simply by the nature in which it’s told (via flashbacks), yes, but not to in the same sort of confusing complexity as say Lynch’s “Lost Highway” (1997). Which is probably a good thing, because “Lost Highway” makes my brain hurt, and not in a good way.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
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Werner Herzog’s “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done” doesn’t really have a plot and there’s basically no character development in it at all. Honestly, nothing of consequence happens during a majority of the 93-minute runtime, and anything that does, you already know by the end of the first beat. And yet, the film is unquestionably quite an alluring watch… strangely so. The ensemble cast is truly extraordinary and the performances are exceptional (Shannon may be type-cast as another crazy, but he does crazy so well, I don’t care). Even though very, very little actually happens in the film, I was glued to the screen both times I ran it through. This is definitely a film that will divide audiences, perhaps even more so than it already has divided critics, so I can’t outright give this my highest recommendation, despite the fact that I think it’s a brilliant piece of cinema (if not a tiny bit disappointing considering that both the names David Lynch and Werner Herzog appear in the credits; I concede that it is certainly weaker than most of what either have done individually). Simply I think this is a case of those that will like the movie, will like it; those that don’t, will hate it. No in-betweens on this one I’m afraid; it is that polarizing.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
Special Features:
- Audio commentary with writer/director Werner Herzog, co-writer Herbert Golder and producer Eric Bassett
- “Plastic Bag” short film (18:27)
- “Behind the Madness: the Making of ‘My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done’” featurette (27:30)
- Theatrical trailer (2:19)
- Bonus trailers: Leaves of Grass (2:27) and The Locksmith (1:34)
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