"My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?" stars Michael Shannon as Brad Macallum, who, as the movie opens, has just killed his widowed mother and is holed up in their flamingo-themed home, allegedly with two hostages. Outside, Detective Hank Havenhurst (Willem Dafoe) awaits the arrival of a SWAT team.
"Son" is based on an event which occurred on June 10th, 1979, in which Mark Yavorsky, a San Diego grad student who had been cast as the matricidal lead in Orestes (a Greek tragedy), murdered his own mother with an antique sword. This is interesting material, but "Son" was directed by Werner Herzog, a director who habitually uses "true stories" to construct his own personal little fables.
And so here we have the tale of a man who, in typical Herzog fashion, ventures off into the jungles of Peru. He's on a spiritual quest, but is left petrified when confronted by a Nature deemed wild, lawless and malevolent. Brad thus returns to America a broken man, a humbling encounter with a river – a Schopenhaueren God which forces him to confront, not only his mortality but his own insignificance – having deeply scarred him. This is a common Herzog theme: when their support structures, Gods and Master Signifiers collapse into dust, Herzog's heroes all go mad. Brad though, also develops a new-found sense of Godhood. If he is nothing he will become everything! And so Brad, like Herzog, sets off to tame the wild.
Problem is, Brad's a bit of a loser, perpetually at the mercy of countless lesser Gods, none of whom he can surmount. Herzog thus stresses Brad's impotency: he can't afford a house, lives with his mom, can't hold a job, cannot perform sexually or musically, is kicked off a stage-play and is belittled by everyone.
But Brad is determined to fight back! Soon his quietly domineering mother becomes a tin of Quaker Oats, a domestic dictator whom he will later cast out of his home, her body rolling out into the streets. "Razzle dazzle!" Brad chants, shaking a coffee cup triumphantly. He thinks his spectacle has elevated him above man, but Herzog undercuts the scene with the story of a police detective who drove cross-country holding a coffee cup in one hand. Brad's path to Godhood is a path civilised men routinely drive.
Throughout the film, Brad is linked with homosexuality, femininity and the colour pink; a castrated man in a theatre company of only women. "A Greek play?" Brad's uncle mocks, foreshadowing the film's ball-laden last shot. "The only thing Greeks know is how to play with their balls!"
Herzog loves using birds. Here he has Brad detest the pink flamingos ("Pink Flamingos": a 1972 film with homosexual man-servants) of his home, all of which point to an ingrained sense of ineffectuality. And so Brad takes the birds hostage and begins to imagine himself as a mighty ostrich, whom his bigoted uncle calls "the last dinosaurs". Like the ostrich, Brad's head may now be underground, ignored by all, but, as he says, the "time will come when the ostrich rises again and its wings scorneth all!" By the film's end, Brad's Western rise and fall ("Pity the sun rises in the East"), his egoism, is contrasted with a more eastern holism.
Before this, one ostrich, Brad's surrogate, defiantly steals the spectacles of a theatre director ("I'm the director, you do what I tell you!"). Later Herzog will link a circle of illuminated prescription spectacles to both heaven (see Herzog's "Heart of Glass") and Brad's own warped, "divine" perspective. Brad believes himself to be a prophet ("I have taken a new vocation as a righteous merchant!"), destined to claim The Glass, to bring heaven itself back down to earth. Arrogantly, he changes his name to Farouk, Arabic for "all knowing".
Of course, to the theatre director, Brad's a nutcase. "It's not the right kind of sword," the snivelling God complains, throwing Brad out of his stage play. But from the sidelines, Brad gets an idea. In the play, Tantalus challenges the gods, constructing a test to determine whether they are real. Brad thinks: I will razzle dazzle the gods, test them, measure my performance against their shoulders!
More surrealism follows: an ornamental flamingo slamming into a tree mirrors a sequence in which a dwarf, though himself dwarfed by a tree, dwarfs two men. Brad wants to be this dwarf, caught below a looming Nature, but towering above man. Brad thus goes in search of this still point, this limbo between Tree and Man. He recounts a basketball story in which he seemingly hovered in the air, and later walks against the flow of an escalator, suspended as infinity stretches to beyond before him. Herzog's usual message – magnificently rage and fail before Nature – changes: to fight balance is suicide.
Last act: Brad mimics Christ. He gives away his possessions and attempts to heal the sick, but to no avail. Finally, be places a basketball in a tree. It's this gesture which Herzog perhaps advocates, humility in the face of both Nature and oneself. The film's final shot, in which a ball is perched in a tree, on a hill above a city, not only recalls several symbols littered throughout the film (the tree, the ball, suspension, balance, the hill), but mirrors its first shot, in which we watch from below as cargo trains thunder across a hill. Brad's achieved some measure of transcendence, some height, not by scaling the tree, but by nestling within it. Still, he dreams of being more, visions of ostrich armies emblazoned on his brain, racing across deserts like fleets of tanks.
8/10 – With Lynch AWOL, Herzog's now our go-to man for madcap hilarity. Note: this film is not channelling Lynch. Herzog 'invented' almost everything Lynch does. Worth two viewings.
"Son" is based on an event which occurred on June 10th, 1979, in which Mark Yavorsky, a San Diego grad student who had been cast as the matricidal lead in Orestes (a Greek tragedy), murdered his own mother with an antique sword. This is interesting material, but "Son" was directed by Werner Herzog, a director who habitually uses "true stories" to construct his own personal little fables.
And so here we have the tale of a man who, in typical Herzog fashion, ventures off into the jungles of Peru. He's on a spiritual quest, but is left petrified when confronted by a Nature deemed wild, lawless and malevolent. Brad thus returns to America a broken man, a humbling encounter with a river – a Schopenhaueren God which forces him to confront, not only his mortality but his own insignificance – having deeply scarred him. This is a common Herzog theme: when their support structures, Gods and Master Signifiers collapse into dust, Herzog's heroes all go mad. Brad though, also develops a new-found sense of Godhood. If he is nothing he will become everything! And so Brad, like Herzog, sets off to tame the wild.
Problem is, Brad's a bit of a loser, perpetually at the mercy of countless lesser Gods, none of whom he can surmount. Herzog thus stresses Brad's impotency: he can't afford a house, lives with his mom, can't hold a job, cannot perform sexually or musically, is kicked off a stage-play and is belittled by everyone.
But Brad is determined to fight back! Soon his quietly domineering mother becomes a tin of Quaker Oats, a domestic dictator whom he will later cast out of his home, her body rolling out into the streets. "Razzle dazzle!" Brad chants, shaking a coffee cup triumphantly. He thinks his spectacle has elevated him above man, but Herzog undercuts the scene with the story of a police detective who drove cross-country holding a coffee cup in one hand. Brad's path to Godhood is a path civilised men routinely drive.
Throughout the film, Brad is linked with homosexuality, femininity and the colour pink; a castrated man in a theatre company of only women. "A Greek play?" Brad's uncle mocks, foreshadowing the film's ball-laden last shot. "The only thing Greeks know is how to play with their balls!"
Herzog loves using birds. Here he has Brad detest the pink flamingos ("Pink Flamingos": a 1972 film with homosexual man-servants) of his home, all of which point to an ingrained sense of ineffectuality. And so Brad takes the birds hostage and begins to imagine himself as a mighty ostrich, whom his bigoted uncle calls "the last dinosaurs". Like the ostrich, Brad's head may now be underground, ignored by all, but, as he says, the "time will come when the ostrich rises again and its wings scorneth all!" By the film's end, Brad's Western rise and fall ("Pity the sun rises in the East"), his egoism, is contrasted with a more eastern holism.
Before this, one ostrich, Brad's surrogate, defiantly steals the spectacles of a theatre director ("I'm the director, you do what I tell you!"). Later Herzog will link a circle of illuminated prescription spectacles to both heaven (see Herzog's "Heart of Glass") and Brad's own warped, "divine" perspective. Brad believes himself to be a prophet ("I have taken a new vocation as a righteous merchant!"), destined to claim The Glass, to bring heaven itself back down to earth. Arrogantly, he changes his name to Farouk, Arabic for "all knowing".
Of course, to the theatre director, Brad's a nutcase. "It's not the right kind of sword," the snivelling God complains, throwing Brad out of his stage play. But from the sidelines, Brad gets an idea. In the play, Tantalus challenges the gods, constructing a test to determine whether they are real. Brad thinks: I will razzle dazzle the gods, test them, measure my performance against their shoulders!
More surrealism follows: an ornamental flamingo slamming into a tree mirrors a sequence in which a dwarf, though himself dwarfed by a tree, dwarfs two men. Brad wants to be this dwarf, caught below a looming Nature, but towering above man. Brad thus goes in search of this still point, this limbo between Tree and Man. He recounts a basketball story in which he seemingly hovered in the air, and later walks against the flow of an escalator, suspended as infinity stretches to beyond before him. Herzog's usual message – magnificently rage and fail before Nature – changes: to fight balance is suicide.
Last act: Brad mimics Christ. He gives away his possessions and attempts to heal the sick, but to no avail. Finally, be places a basketball in a tree. It's this gesture which Herzog perhaps advocates, humility in the face of both Nature and oneself. The film's final shot, in which a ball is perched in a tree, on a hill above a city, not only recalls several symbols littered throughout the film (the tree, the ball, suspension, balance, the hill), but mirrors its first shot, in which we watch from below as cargo trains thunder across a hill. Brad's achieved some measure of transcendence, some height, not by scaling the tree, but by nestling within it. Still, he dreams of being more, visions of ostrich armies emblazoned on his brain, racing across deserts like fleets of tanks.
8/10 – With Lynch AWOL, Herzog's now our go-to man for madcap hilarity. Note: this film is not channelling Lynch. Herzog 'invented' almost everything Lynch does. Worth two viewings.