Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009) - Herzog and Shannon take us down the rabbit-hole

10/22/2020

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009) - Herzog and Shannon take us down the rabbit-hole

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best Box Office Disaster of the Year + Shooting Star Actor of the Year: Michael Shannon + Best True-Crime Movie of the Year + Most Under-appreciated Movie of the Year + Worst $ Return of the Year: 0.03 times the cost

Co-star Michael Shannon looks intense in B/W on this gloomy poster for Werner Herzog's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

In a San Diego home a man stabs his mother to death with a sword. Key figures to the man attempt in the period leading up to his arrest to relate and understand this terrible action.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is written by Herbert Golder (Ballad of a Righteous Merchant, documentary (2018)) and great German co-writer/director Werner Herzog (Signs of Life/Lebenszeichen (1968)), based on the bizarre 1979 Mark Yavorsky San Diego matricide case. The title is a Biblical quote.

The film doesn't look like much, but do not be mistaken; Herzog rarely deals in the insubstantial, and here he delivers a solid motion picture. Narratively the film is structured in a somewhat humorist fashion as a mass of flashbacks, a bit like cinema classic Citizen Kane (1941), and always good Willem Dafoe (Victory (1996)) as well as Udo Kier (Stingers (1998)) in a considerable and well-acted supporting role add subtle humor with societal sting to the psychological crime drama. This feels good, seeing as the central story of matricide here is mighty heavy stuff, and Michael Shannon (Blackbird (2007)) is frighteningly precise in his portrayal of the psychotic grown son. He is perfectly coupled with Chloë Sevigny (Lizzie (2018)) here.

The impressive cast also has good performances from Grace Zabriskie (The Waterdance (1992)), Loretta Devine (For Colored Girls (2010)), Irma P. Hall (Collateral (2004)), Brad Dourif (Interceptor Force (1998)) and Michael Peña (Observe and Report (2009)). My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done has a strange Herzogian imprint in the shape of static, stagnant, evocative shots and sequences shot in Peru and China, but the film remains straight-forward in terms of understanding it. It is ultimately a devastating portrait of the insane person led to commit murder; devastating in its level of detail and accuracy. The film's theater dimension, - an old Greek tragedy informs the crime, - is fascinating, but you will have to read about the film to know that it is part of its true-crime basis and not an actual fantasy created by the filmmakers.

2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
Cobra Verde/Slave Coast (1987) - Herzog and Kinski's final work delves into the madness of slavery

Fitzcarraldo (1982) - Herzog's mad Amazonian opera monument
Even Dwarfs Started Small/Auch Zwerge Haben Klein Angefangen (1970) - Herzog teases us to react with uniquely odd experimental drama

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Estimated 2 mil. $

Box office: 76k $

= Box office disaster (returned 0.03 times its cost)

[My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done premiered 6 September (Venice Film Festival, competing also against Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans) and runs 91 minutes. Golder and Herzog wrote the script together over the course of 4 days in 1995. Golder had met the then released, strange recluse Yavorsky several times, and Herzog joined them for the last meeting. Herzog termed Yavorsky "argumentative" and was disturbed by the man's shrine for Herzog's film Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) in his home. Golder and Herzog decided to keep the script mostly apart from Yavorsky's personal story, while keeping the basis in his Greek myth-inspired matricide by sword. Financing did not prove easy and only came together, when David Lynch came in contact with Herzog with an interest to produce. Shooting took place in California, including San Diego and Los Angeles, Mexico, Peru and China from April 2009 - ?. For the China shoot, Herzog elected not to go through a lengthy permit period and instead went alone along with Shannon and producer Eric Bassett to shoot 'guerilla style' as tourists at a remote market. Shooting was done with the RED ONE camera, which Herzog later criticized as an "immature camera". The film was released mostly at a string of festivals. In the US it also had releases in New York, Chicago and San Diego, but these are not recorded on the film's Box Office Mojo site, which only has grosses listed for Portugal and Italy. (UK is the only other general release market for the film and is also missing.) Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review. Herzog returned with 7 documentary projects prior to his next theatrical release Queen of the Desert (2015). Shannon returned in The Runaways (2010)); Dafoe in Daybreakers (2009); and Sevigny in Beloved (2009, short), The Fragile White Blossoms Emit a Hypnotic Cascade of Tropical Perfume Whose Sweet Heady Odor Leaves Its Victim Intoxicated (2009, short) and theatrically in Barry Munday (2010). My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is rotten at 49 % with a 5.76/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

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Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

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Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

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Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

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Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

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10/22/2020

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009) - Herzog and Shannon take us down the rabbit-hole

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