You shouldn’t be ashamed to get a little excited to see the name David Lynch on a film, even if it is him being a credited as a producer as he is here with My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done. However, Lynch fans will be disappointed with this film, as normally good director, Werner Herzog (Bad Lieutenant, Rescue Dawn) tries so hard to make this a Lynch-esque film that he ends up losing control what could have been a great story on the big screen.
The film begins with Detective Hank Havenhurst (Willem Dafoe – A Woman, Miral) and Detective Vargas (Michael Pena – 30 Minutes Or Less, The Good Doctor) heading to a crime scene, where it is soon determined that Brad McCullum (Michael Shannon – The Broken Tower, Return) has murdered his mother (Grace Zabriskie – Bob Funk, TV’S Big Love) using a sword. As a siege follows, Havenhurst works out what led to this tragic event by talking to those who knew McCullum, including his girlfriend, Ingrid (Chloe Sevigny – Mr. Nice, TV’S Big Love).
Herzog loses control of this film really early on. In a bid to make the film appear as it has been written and directed by David Lynch his use of things such as the flamingoes and the way in which he desperately tries to show that McCullum is ‘different’ ends up completely overshadowing the main story at hand. So much so that soon the characters become completely unbelievable and the audience becomes so frustrated that by the time scenes flash up on screen with ostriches and dwarves you get a lot of audience members heading for the door (which happened at the screening I was at). There is good-strange and then there is strange-just-for-the-sake-of-being-strange.
You know that this film is on really rocky ground when you realize that an actor of the caliber of Willen Dafoe (of which I am normally a huge fan) is putting in a bad performance due to the fact that the script he is working with is so lame. So, bad are some of the lines that Dafoe is expected to deliver that you can’t help but simply groan. The same can be said for Chloe Sevigny who simply has nothing to work with. The only actor to get any sense of credibility from this film is Michael Shannon who sifts through the crap to put in a good effort playing the psychotic McCullum… although you really do have to wonder if even Shannon could tell you what a lot of his scenes are actually about.
My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done is a clear example of why a filmmaker should never try to be someone else. David Lynch can make a David Lynch without ever becoming too strange however this movie painfully shows that Werner Herzog certainly can’t make a David Lynch film. Beyond strange, unfortunately My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done is a candidate for one of the worst films of the year.
Year: 2009
Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Willem Dafoe, Michael Shannon, Michael Pena, Chloe Sevginy
Classification: M
Runtime: 91 mins
Rating: 