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

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+ 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.

 

Related posts:

Werner Herzog: Jack Reacher (2012) - Highly entertaining, dark hero-vehicle for Tom Cruise (supporting actor) 
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010) - Herzog and Vasyukov invite us to meet a remote, tough Siberian people 
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans/Bad Lieutenant (2009) or, Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant

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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