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

Detectives Havenhurst (Willem Dafoe) and Vargas (Michael Peña) are called to a crime scene. Mrs. McCullam has been stabbed to death. Her son Brad McCullam (Michael Shannon) is the prime suspect and he has taken hostages in the house across the street. The police interviews his fiancé Ingrid Gudmundson (Chloë Sevigny) and director Lee Meyers (Udo Kier) who reveal past incidents and his mental deterioration.This is Werner Herzog and therefore it must be a masterpiece. He is taking the familiar cop crime drama and mixing it with a character study of a disturb mind. He has created his own language and a wonderful new form of cinema. What if this is not Werner Herzog? Then this would be a confusing, boring piece of crap. The constant reliance on flashbacks drains any immediacy and tension from the movie. These are great actors. The structure of the movie really let the whole thing down. Instead of his voice, his vision is a mess of the traditional genre.

Another film from a director that is considered great. I personally think he's overrated but I managed to sit through his collaboration with David Lynch. I personally thought it was a decent movie and nothing more.Told mostly in flashback, this movie tries to bring together the reason why a man murdered his mother and holds 2 people hostage in his house. From his mental instabilities to his obsession over a Greek play this is what My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done asks.Where do I begin, firstly, if you are not interested in what drove the leading character to kill his mother then the chances are that you are not going to like this movie. I am just mentioning that just in case you feel like watching it.Aside from that everything else is good. The acting though is worth a mention. It is good acting, Michael Shannon does play a great crazy man. Everyone else is good but at the end of the day it is Shannon's show.So if you want to see this kind of movie then this is for you. If you are also a fan of Werner Herzog (or at least know what to expect from one of his movies) then this one is worth a look.

After lying in production limbo for almost fifteen years, director Werner Herzog finally managed to make his film, loosely based on the story of Mark Yavorsky, with the help of producer David Lynch. You would think a collaboration of two such instantly recognisable auteurs may cause problems or lead to a clash of the two directors' film-making ideals, but My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is distinctively Herzogian, continuing the prolific German director's fascination with the quirky corners of the American South. By showing us the murder and the murderer within the first five minutes, Herzog removes any element of mystery surrounding the crime, and instead focuses on the mental disintegration of its protagonist, as well as placing his own spin on the familiar hostage crisis drama.Detectives Havenhurst (Willem Dafoe) and Vargas (Michael Pena) arrive at the scene of a recent murder, where an elderly lady has been stabbed with an antique sword. Outside the crime scene, a man drinking coffee says something strange to Havenhurst, and shortly after, the detectives realise this man is Brad Macallam (Michael Shannon), the son of the murdered woman and also the murderer. Brad shacks himself up in his own home with two unseen hostages and a shotgun, so Havenhurst begins to delve into Brad's story, with the help of Brad's fiancé Ingrid (Chloe Sevigny) and his drama teacher Lee Meyers (Udo Kier). What they discover is a man changed by a recent trip to Peru, where he pulled out of a kayak trip at the last minute after hearing the voice of God telling him not to, only for everyone else to be killed.This is certainly one of Herzog's 'smaller' films, following the almost mainstream and outlandish (but hugely entertaining) Bad Lieutenant earlier the same year. Yet Herzog is no stranger to budget, location and equipment constraints, and has made some of his best films under these conditions, and manages to tell an absorbing, sometime hypnotic tale of a wild man at odds with his surroundings. This is a recurring theme for Herzog - civilised man's struggle against the aggressive, unpredictable forces of nature - and here Brad seems to be isolated from society after witnessing the full force of nature at work. Why exactly does he kill his mother? No questions are truly answered, but the film is more interesting at showing you the factors that may have lead to this horrific act.For the film to work at all, it must have an actor capable of delivering such complexities of the mind into his performance, and Shannon pulls it off perfectly. Quickly becoming my favourite working actor, Shannon is a towering presence, appearing uncomfortable in his own body, all mad eyes and slurred voice. At times it's almost hard to watch him, terrified at what he may do at any given time. Given that any mystery surrounding the murder is removed by Herzog at the beginning of the film, it's a real achievement that the film managed to be as exciting and absorbing as it is, with Herzog's unpredictable approach mixing flashbacks and faked freeze-frames with some of his familiar quirky topics such as wild animals, scarred terrains, dwarfs and a haunting score. A little gem, and as Herzog and Lynch discussed in their successful meeting, "a return of essential film-making" for the director.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

I'm pleasantly surprised by the movie thanks to people's negative comments. Good acting, good rhythm, the dialog doesn't knock you out of the mood that the film has going. Willem Dafoe and Chloe Sevigny are especially comfortable in this one. Didn't like the ending. But that's always the case with arty movies about something vague. For the most part the thing was not pretentious. Art-house viewers keep expecting that legendary moment of cinematic epiphany to hit them. And it never does. I mean it's a movie about acting, directing and pretty landscapes. Maybe the disappointed viewers wanted a smart SWAT thriller or something.