My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done.

A top-shelf director works on the outskirts of Hollywood with a limited budget and a short production schedule. The cast is also high quality, as is the crew. It's a crime film about a killer, told in an expressionistic way, with flashbacks, and parallels of ancient themes. Co-written by the director (over a week's time in a secluded part of Austria), the film feels slightly mechanical (Herzog says precise), but with a director's strong imprint.

The filmmaking spirit of My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done feels close to the popular view of film noir; though the style is far removed. Maybe the hard-boiled style of Port of Call was closer, but further in spirit. And maybe they are both somehow closer to classic Hollywood filmmaking traditions than their contemporary grindhouse counterpoints, films typically made by young filmmakers reverent first to style and attitude. The only way to be faithful to a true original is to be a true original yourself.

In My Son, My Son, you feel the constrictions of a police procedural bend to the convictions of Werner Herzog. He wants to make the movie his own way: the fabric of the film pulses with his personality, and sometimes there appear gaping, naked moments, fragments and details like flamingos, oatmeal, and gospel music, and larger revelations about the weight of an instant, transformations of personality, and creativity/madness. Conceptually there's a lot to admire, and Herzog continues to be outside our time.

It challenges the priorities of other crime films. The act of murder is never shown, the interior of the house during the hostage negotiation is never shown (I think it should have been!), the peripheral charters' interior lives are mostly ignored, and sleeping pills aren't slipped under the cheese of a peppery pizza. Typical aspects of a crime film, like a goal-oriented narrative, and a killer derived cathartic release, are foregone. Many details of the real life case are omitted (Herzog continues to refer to fact based narratives as possessing 'an accountant's truth'). The center of the film is a murder, and the narrative is a swirling mass of personality, metaphysics, police procedure, and murder mystery. It seems unfocused.

The film's tone suggests neither a crime film nor reality; it's too distanced, too impersonal to be auteurism. Its chaotic masquerade is the biggest problem in terms of appealing to an audience, the same criticism commonly attributed to diffident, underimaginative filmmakers who lack the will and sense of vision needed to beguile an audience, filmmakers nothing like Herzog. But it seems difficult to praise the film beyond these connotations without the background knowledge of who Herzog is and the context of the production, there's too much order and not enough force of personality to give the film a clear shape, and it's easy to see the film as underdeveloped, poorly written, and poorly executed. For some, the idea might trump the execution. A more exciting and rewarding option is admiring it for what it is.

Herzog has begun to use Hollywood actors, but there remains a sense of a madman running the show. The appearances of Willem Dafoe, Chloë Sevigny, Udo Kier, and Grace Zabriskie were inevitable and logical. He continues to best use Brad Dourif. He wants to take Michael Shannon to new places, though I struggle to see all of what Herzog sees in him. He lacks both madness and authenticity.


Speculation: it's a thrill to work with Herzog as an actor. His brand of artistry is boundless jubilation and curiosity, wonder and adventure, and he asks his actors do things other directors don't. According to Herzog, during a dinner scene in My Son, My Son, he decided he wanted a freeze frame, and instead of freezing the frame in post-production he simply directed his actors to freeze (not move) at the end of the scene. You can see, for a moment, the actor's respond to this request, and then they freeze, and Herzog holds.