‘My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done’ Inspires Genuine Head-Scratching

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HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 2.5/5.0
Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – When David Lynch came to Chicago for an “Inland Empire” screening back in 2007, he offered memorable advice to a moviegoer baffled by his work. He said that his audience should meditate not on the “intellectual experience” provided by his films, but the emotional ideas that they conjure. Meditating on anything else would prove useless because, as Lynch put it, “If you meditate on buttermilk, you’ll end up going to the dairy.”

Such advice may prove useful to adventurous moviegoers eager to get their minds warped by “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done,” a truly bizarre experiment forged by two of our greatest living filmmakers. It was executive produced by Lynch and directed by Werner Herzog as a sort of riff on Lynch’s work, while also delving into his own trademark obsessions. It’s as much a work of free association filmmaking as Lynch’s “Empire,” using the basic scenario of a true-life crime as its jumping-off point for exploring the human psyche. Yet while “Empire” was anchored by the emotional reality of Laura Dern’s central performance, “My Son” is populated merely by impenetrable curiosities.

StarRead Matt Fagerholm’s full review of “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?” in our reviews section.

The plot is loosely based on a 1979 matricide committed by 34-year-old Mark Yavorksy, a San Diego man who excelled in both sports (particularly basketball) and theatre. His unstable behavior caused him to get kicked out of a UCSD production of the Greek tragedy “Orestes,” in which Yavorsky was cast as a son who slays his mother to avenge his father’s death. The line separating reality from artifice may have become hopelessly blurred in his head on the day that he stabbed his mother to death with an antique sword. Herzog interviewed Yavorsky before his death, and it’s a shame that he didn’t simply make a documentary about him. The auteur’s “nonfiction” work over the last couple decades has often been far more compelling than his fictionalized narratives (I vastly prefer “Little Dieter Needs to Fly” over “Rescue Dawn”).

Instead, Herzog imposes his own themes and beliefs on Yavorsky’s story, resulting in a picture that somehow feels both derivative and perplexingly abstract. Herzog has always had a boundless interest in dissecting the minds of men spiraling into madness, yet his characters’ motivations have rarely felt as tacked on as they do in “My Son.” His version of Yavorksy, Brad McCullum (Michael Shannon), is yet another Herzogian basketcase whose descent into insanity has been caused by his mysterious experience in nature. On a trip to Peru (the infamous location of “Fitzcarraldo”), a voice inside McCullum’s head tells him not to join his friends on their doomed kayaking expedition. After they perish, McCullum becomes hypnotized by his inner voices, and returns to America a changed man.

StarRead Matt Fagerholm’s full review of “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?” in our reviews section.

‘My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done’ stars Michael Shannon, Chloe Sevigny, Udo Kier, Brad Dourif, Grace Zabriskie, Willem Dafoe, Michael Peña, Loretta Devine and Irma P. Hall. It was written by Herbert Golder and Werner Herzog and directed by Werner Herzog. It opened on April 9th, 2010 at the Music Box in Chicago and is still expanding around the country. It is not rated.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?
Photo credit: Unified Pictures

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