MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE

Let's just say my favorite part of the film involved an ostrich stealing eyeglasses from Udo Kier.

David Lynch and Werner Herzog each have their own cult followings for good reason. Freaky fans love them and critics try to out-do each other to proclaim that they "get" their films. I fall somewhere in-between. Lynch can be accessible (The Straight Story), baffling (Mulholland Drive), or can make me literally run from a theater with no regret (Eraserhead). Herzog fares better with me (like with Encounters at the End of the World or Grizzly Man), but has a special place in my heart for baffling my college buddies and I with the bizarre Aguirre, Wrath of God ("Lalalala...").

So just about any movie fan would be curious to see what Lynch (as producer) and Herzog (as director) could come up with together.

Well... let's just say it definitely falls on the side of baffling.

For all practical purposes, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is a police/criminal drama. Cop Willem Defoe shows up at a murder scene in the burbs of San Diego, and the murderer is a weirdly casual guy with a cup of coffee that strolls in broad daylight back to his own home across the street. Michael Shannon is the suspect, and he immediately locks himself in his house, creating a standoff with the cops in which he hollers out the slightly-cracked garage door and rolls containers of Quaker Oats in the cops' general direction.

It sounds rather standard, with crazy-eyed Michael Shannon physically matched (in an eerily perfect way) by Lynch favorite, crazy-eyed Grace Zabriskie as his over possessive mom. Throw in Udo Kier (hmmm... also crazy-eyed?) as a friend, and indie-stalwart Chloë Sevigny as the fiancée, and you have a certainly interesting cast working in a completely bizarre and frustrating context. The language is practically deadpan and haltingly delivered. Much emphasis is placed on the idea of Greek tragedy. And often a scene will end with the characters playing statue-maker, and just freezing on the spot until the scene closes maybe a minute later (you can see them blinking and struggling not to sway in place). Oh, and yes, there's a dwarf.

Let's just say my favorite part of the film involved an ostrich stealing eyeglasses from Udo Kier, who gets really pissed off and affronted about the situation. But I guess anyone would, when faced with a similar situation.

For me, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done fell on the Lynch/Herzog scale of fidget-inducing to borderline intolerable. This one is for fans only. If you are simply curious, there are certainly better ways to pass your time in front of the tube.

DVD EXTRAS

If you really really want to know more about this film, there is a feature commentary by director Werner Herzog. But surprisingly, the best thing about this DVD is the other extra, a short (20-ish minutes) film called "Plastic Bag" by Ramin Bahrani. It is a beautifully filmed ode to the life of a plastic bag, who is on an earnest attempt to be reunited with his "maker"... the woman who took him home from the grocery store, only to discard him later. And, wonderfully, Herzog himself is the "voice" of the plastic bag. I kinda loved this film in the same way I kinda hated the feature movie.