Reviews of My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
Displaying all 3 reviews
H. Paul Moon
27Mar12
Hilarious. So almost all of Herzog’s disciples took the bait.
For the rest of the sentient universe, movies have just a few more things on their laundry lists than simply “being different.”
Werner Herzog is an occasionally great documentary filmmaker: “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” with an Ernst Reijseger score that actually works (unlike the gooey EZ listening ambience here), is wonderful. Herzog’s narrative work, especially the two most recent examples that also include his unauthorized insult to Abel Ferrara in New Orleans, generally qualify as trainwrecks. Indeed, the opening shot of this film — just a simple stationary shot of a train going by — should have just ended with a symbolic crash, without proceeding to kill these 1-1/2 hours of our lives that we’ll never get back.
The Werner Apostles who are already in the bag will roll their eyes (and sigh), on cue, at any technical critique, but really, if you can pay major actors like these to show up on a set, you can hire competent people to light up scenes too, without making your audience strain around poor color grading and crushed shadows to see what’s actually happening in the shot. You can also find decent camera gear (not just still cameras in video mode), without this amateurish aliasing and moire (unless you’re too cool for skool).
- Currently 1.0/5 Stars.
hubertguillaud
6Nov10
Film étrange, à la musique omniprésente, aux personnages criards, au montage complexe, à la lenteur déroutante. A le voir, on comprend que le film n’ait jamais été distribué. Un film volontairement déconcertant dont les spectateurs seront volontairement déconcertés. Du cinéma qui se croit intello mais qui évite surtout de faire du cinéma, préférant laisser les acteurs crier, comme si leurs cris étaient encore dérangeants. Les années 70 sont pourtant loin.
- Currently 1.0/5 Stars.
asuraf
25Sep10
Lesser Herzog often plays like a parody of classic Hezog, and this bizarre film, exec-produced by David Lynch, has hints of Aguirre and Bruno S. in it’s depiction of slow building madness, but it’s a slog, miscast and uneven.
Michael Shannon plays Brad, a loafer from Southern California who lives with his mother, surrounded by flamingos in a perfectly Lynchian suburb; one day he takes a sword and stabs her to death in a neighbor’s living room, serving the film with it’s central mystery as it plays out in flashback during a hostage negotiation.
Willem Dafoe is the head detective in charge of figuring out the mystery, with Chloe Sevigny as Brad’s fiancée filling in crucial plot holes, like Brad’s disastrous white-water rafting trip to Peru, and character traits, which come to beg the question of Brad’s sanity, and why he wasn’t committed sooner, pre-matricide.
There’s nothing aesthetically wrong with the picture, Herzog can frame a lunatic against a Peruvian backdrop as good as always, it’s just that Brad goes off the deep end so fast that his motives (his clingy mother, the bad Peru trip, his firing from a Greek tragedy play) never register as important enough to justify the setup.
- Currently 3.0/5 Stars.