My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

An unusually unwatchable effort from filmmaker Werner Herzog, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done follows Michael Shannon’s mentally unstable Brad McCullum as he murders his mother (Grace Zabriskie) and holds two unknown figures hostage. The flimsy storyline ultimately exists as a springboard for a myriad of eye-rollingly quirky interludes, as screenwriters Herzog and Herbert Golder eschew anything even resembling normalcy and authenticity and instead offer up one aggressively off-the-wall sequence after another (eg two men stop in mid-conversation and stare directly into the camera, while a tuxedoed Verne Troyer lurks in the background). It’s subsequently not surprising to note that My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done establishes itself as a baffling ordeal virtually from the get-go and maintains this feeling of frustrating pointlessness right up until the anti-climactic finale, which is undoubtedly a shame given the presence of some seriously talented actors within the supporting cast (including Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, and Brad Dourif). As for the movie’s star, Shannon’s notoriously idiosyncratic sensibilities serve him quite well here – as the actor delivers as relentlessly oddball and weird a performance as one has come to expect (although it’s just as clear that this marks the apex of his career in terms of his ability to tackle similarly over-the-top figures in the future). And while there are a few admittedly amusing moments sprinkled here and there (eg an ostrich steals Udo Kier’s glasses), My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is nothing less than a monumental misstep that boasts few attributes designed to capture and sustain the interest of even the most avant-garde viewer.

* out of ****