MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE Review; Herzog's best feature in decades
rating: 4
Sometimes I'm not sure who is worse: us cops or the criminals, muses Willem Dafoe at the start of Werner Herzog's latest film, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? It is familiar territory for the German auteur who in the last year also directed Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans. A film which saw Nicolas Cage's eponymous cop slide headlong into a world of drug abuse and criminality. Like that film, and like so many of his past works (Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre, Grizzly Man), My Son follows a central characters descent into madness. Bad Lieutenant had prolonged close-ups of iguanas, which according to interviews Herzog filmed himself simply because he thought the animals looked absurd. Perhaps it is that same sentiment which led to the prominent role played by flamingos in My Son. The birds are dubbed eagles in drag by the insane, matricidal protagonist, Brad McCullum (played with intensity by Academy Award nominee Michael Shannon), a man who also claims that the image of a puritan on an oatmeal box literally IS God. As if Herzog's reputation was not enough of a guarantee of a certain penchant for the bizarre (in form and content), then add to the mix the fact that the film's executive producer is David Lynch. My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done? is as surreal and downright crazy as one would expect of a film from this source. Lynch's mark is most strongly felt in the lo-fi aesthetic reminiscent of Inland Empire. But perhaps most odd and disturbing contribution to the film comes from an unlikely source. The film is loosely based on a real event, the case of a man called Mark Yavorsky who killed his mother with an antique sword. Herzog says the film is around 70% fictional in terms of the events, but Shannon's character is based on a very real unhinged individual. Herzog met with the real life Yavorsky shortly before making the film and left the meeting (with the man he described as argumentative) fearing for his safety. Considering the sturdy German once famously made light of being shot during a television interview and once ran towards an evacuated island to film a soon-to-explode volcano, Yavorsky must have been pretty frighteningly insane. It is this wild, uncontrollable and unpredictable force that Herzog and Shannon capture so brilliantly here. There is an uneasy feeling that hangs over My Son throughout as you anticipate some sort of sudden and horrific event.
Adam Whyte posted a four-star review of the film - which is seeing a very limited theatrical release on September 10th , with a DVD release soon after on the 27th - back in June after a screening at the Edinburgh Festival. And as that review said, the film is also blackly funny. In fact, for all the foreboding, My Son is a very funny film indeed. As highlighted best by his documentaries, Herzog has a gift for finding the insane, the obsessive and the unusual in real life, and this film works best because its maker is not afraid to embrace the humour he finds in basic absurdity especially that found in nature, human or otherwise. Little things clearly tickle Herzog, usually things he identifies as pointless, such as the facile nature of the precise manner in which the cops document the crime scene (note that the cups are three inches apart). He is continually baffled by irrationality. When McCullum tells a friend to stop meditating and look at the world because reality is all around him, it is not too much of a stretch to feel that the director empathizes with him. Or at least, that he sees the characters insanity as being his own peculiar blend, rather than anything that sets him apart. Perhaps, to Herzog, we are all insane in our own way. The film also works because, despite his limited budget, Herzog is also able to cherry pick from some of the most interesting contemporary actors for his recent feature work. Alongside Shannon and Dafoe - who plays a homicide detective seeking to understand his suspect's psyche through interviewing his friends are Chloë Sevigny, Brad Dourif and (Lynch regular) Grace Zabriskie. Everybody involved approaches the film with incredible commitment. Sevigny is particularly good as McCullum's girlfriend, whilst Dourif gets some of the films funniest lines of dialogue. 
The class of this ensemble transcends the cheap, home video look of the film. Although Herzog used the digital Red One camera (which Soderbergh also used to such good effect on his Che films last year), he didn't get on with it and later criticized it, calling it immature and suggesting that it was the product of those he pejoratively referred to as computer people. But whilst it is not an especially polished looking movie, My Son is still visually arresting thanks to its maker's ever excellent shot composition. As someone who finds David Lynch a tad pretentious, it seems odd that I should so enjoy Herzog. Especially here at his most maniacally Lynchian. I think the difference is that there is something unfussy and down to earth about the German. His contempt for world record holders in Encounters At the End of the World and his insistence that his feud with a fellow director (Abel Ferrara) could be settled over a bottle of whiskey have always demonstrated to me a refreshingly cut the bullshit approach to the world. It's that fact that makes his films so infinitely rewarding. When he claims in interview that he is in fact the sanest man in Hollywood: I think he means it. Some felt that Bad Lieutenant did not go far enough: that it was not as extreme as many hoped and that its most insane moments were too far apart. It was, in some ways, a more conventional film than many had expected (though I hasten to add that I still found it tremendously enjoyable). But those who felt that way will be less disappointed with My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done?, which pretty consistently stays in the realm of the insane for its endlessly fascinating 93 minutes. Bad Lieutenant is certainly the more polished film. But this latest is perhaps a more significant work from its director. My Son is probably the best non-documentary Herzog film since 1987's Cobra Verde. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done receives a very limited theatrical release on September 10th , with a DVD release soon after on the 27th .