Watch My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done For Free

Good concept, poorly executed.

Fresh and Exciting

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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.

There has been a lot of bad talk about this film but I have watched a lot of Herzog and I love this movie. It is an investigation primarily on mental illness, city life, and how people can get really messed up inside the "walls" of the city (and the little enclaves like families that exist within it). A very strong performance by Michael Shannon and I have to say this guy is really starting to hit his straps now after starting out in bit-part hoodlum roles etc., many years ago. He really has an intensity in this role that no-one else could have accessed, and I mean no-one. This was casting at its absolute best; his big physical presence and natural 1000 yard stare really added to the role. Again Herzog has gone out and made a movie that no-one else wanted to make. It has been a while since I saw it now, but I remember a moment of pure beauty at the end of the movie, I think with with a boy, a ball and a tree within the hugeness of the mega-city wasteland. These are moments where Herzog somehow gives us his inner feelings.

I found this film fascinating. Film is loosely based on the case of Mark Yavorsky, an actor who committed matricide, while playing the role of Orestes, Greek hero who avenges his father, by killing his mother in Aeschylus tragedy. Same crime committed by Yavorsky is presented in the movie, although the rest of the story is mostly fictional according to Herzog and Golden. Film does have a conventional plot frame, but what the story is actually about is exploration of acts of a strange man. That is the true power and value of this film.If you have never met, known, or maybe even had a friend ,that is alike to Brad McCullam in this film, you might not appreciate it, or find it particularly interesting. Person who struggles with reality, one of those people who have created reality, history or logic of their own. I have met plenty of those. But, to be fair,I must say, Brad McCullam's character is not quite one of those. Brad is a person who searches for value and sense in this world, which causes him to bring forth his own strange conclusions. That is what this film is made of - Brad's strange reasoning. Whether a basketball player or a theater actor for Brad it's important to find value and sense in what you do. I must say, Udo Kier, actor known for playing high camp facially expressed and German accented characters in bad movies, is a perfect partner for Michael Shannon here. Two weirdo friends.This kinda reminded me of one Boško Drljić Gandor - a minor youtube legend, guy that is hunting Nirdala, giant snake of the apocalypse.There is so many Brad McCullams out there.Let me finish with one Gandor's quote: ''I will not allow this world to become Nirdalas slavesI will not allow this world become Nirdalas graveyard!''Makes you think.

Less a film and more a test of your patience, this is one of those willfully, calculatingly offbeat productions that baffle you with their existence. None of the folks involved could possibly have thought this would ever make any money or appeal to any significant amount of viewers. The cast doesn't get the chance to do any interesting, let alone exceptional, acting. Most of the dialog sounds like it was excerpted from random fortune cookies. The direction appears to have been inspired by the "awkward pause" segment on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is made with a high level of craft but to no good purpose.Let me be clear, this isn't one of those genuinely weird movies. Those are attempts at conventional motion pictures that just come out weird because they're made by genuinely weird filmmakers or ones inspired by the muses of oddity. This is a case of people who know convention and decide to demonstrate their cleverness by defying it. These films are like pretentious challenges to the audience, daring them to construct some justification or rationalization for what happens on screen. The meta-concept being that you don't enjoy the film, you enjoy explaining the film to yourself and others.I will freely admit that this production may work on some arty level I don't understand. Here's the thing, though. Great art works on more than one level. It engages the audience on more than one level. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done doesn't work on any level of which I can conceive. Not logically, not narratively, not thematically, not metaphorically, not stylistically, not as entertainment nor instruction nor inspiration. Stuff like this is what creates the impression there's something fraudulent about art house cinema, that it's kind of a scam that serves only as a delineation between the bourgeoisie and a self-selected elite of the supposedly enlightened. You like this rubbish not because it's good but to signify to yourself and others that you're a certain sort of person.Brad McCullum (Michael Shannon) is a glaringly disturbed man who kills his mother with a sword one morning. The police arrive and surround Brad in his mother's home, where he lives, and the rest of the movie is a series of flashbacks that take us through Brad's "alone in a crowd" existence right up until the killing. It's all contrived strangeness and slow camera movement. The only honest element is the unacknowledged denial every other character is in about Brad's mental problems.Let me stress that no actor gets a chance to shine, no line of dialog rings true or will stay with you, nothing looks all that great and the grinding string music of the score sounds like something you'd play outside a convenience store to drive away loitering teenagers and small animals. It took sheer force of will to sit through the last hour and if I wasn't specifically watching it in order to write this review, I would never have made it. If some crazy person offered me $1,000 to watch this again, I wouldn't.My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done should only be viewed by those who think that doing so will impress their friends. If that's the case, however, you really need new friends.