Delirium à la carte
by James Roland
Director Werner Herzog: best known to American audiences for Rescue Dawn, that one movie where Christian Bale was sweaty and yelled a lot (in the jungle). For film buffs his résumé stretches farther back into the ‘70s and ‘80s, when he made such foreign-language masterpieces as Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: The Wrath of God.
Once known for his detailed realism, Herzog delves into the surreal. His latest movie, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, continues this trend, carrying Herzog’s crazy torch into the Olympic Stadium of bizarre.
Loosely based on real events (or so the opening credits claim), the film stars Michael Shannon as Brad McCullum, a laid back dude from San Diego who spends his days doting on his mother’s pet flamingos. But after a life-altering experience in Peru, he descends into madness. Eventually, he becomes obsessed with a Greek tragedy and murders his mother with a sword.
Enter the police, played by Willem Dafoe and Michael Peña, and the film begins to jump back and forth between the ensuing standoff and McCullum’s backstory.
At this point, all comparisons to other murder mysteries should end, because Herzog does not intend to reveal McCullum’s innermost desires and motivations. Instead, the film takes its audience on a ride into insanity.
Scenes drift aimlessly around such topics as Jell-O, giant chickens, and lost basketballs while important events carry on just off camera, unheeded by the main characters. In one of the most awkward and hilarious moments, Dafoe’s character opens a scene by begging forgiveness and offering two other characters some coffee. After a pause, the scene moves forward in standard tradition. The coffee and Dafoe’s emotional state hold no bearing on the plot or character development and serve only to trip up a movie-weary audience numbed by the influx of paint-by-number plots in their Netflix queue.
Likewise, every scene in McCullum’s backstory is ultimately pointless in regards to plot and character. They are simply experiential, an intellectual tease. Much like the films of David Lynch (who also served as executive producer on My Son), the deeper meaning is buried so far in the filmmaker’s subconscious it’s pointless to search for it. These ridiculous moments, coupled with some hilarious non-sequitur dialogue from McCullum, will make or break the film for most viewers as they try to piece the whole thing together.
Another memorable moment involves McCullum and his uncle Ted (Brad Dourif) pondering the commercial possibilities of a midget riding a giant rooster. To end the scene, the three actors stare at the camera for 15 seconds without moving. In another, it’s as if Herzog refused to yell “cut,” forcing his actors to awkwardly wait while the cameras rolled, wondering if it was a mistake. Herzog almost squanders his great cast, treating them like tools to tweak his weird story rather than allowing them to build realistic, empathetic characters. But real is not the goal, insanity reigns this storyverse, and Michael Shannon is the only actor allowed to build a nuanced character. He deftly takes McCullum from odd to off-his-rocker, finding that perfect balance between humor and horror, and it will be a shame if this film disappears without at least one award nomination for his performance.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? sways somewhere between brilliant and bizarre without ever landing. But the parts that work best are mesmerizing, well worth renting. It’s a bit odder than the usual American-made film, but trust me, you really want to know what happened to that basketball.
