My Son My Son What Have Ye Done?

MY SON MY SON WHAT HAVE YE DONE? is a film of pure oddity from Werner Herzog. It could almost be seen as Herzog's reaction to "whimsy" in its overuse of completely batshit notions, animals, and characters. The film opens with a cop (Willem Dafoe) arriving at the scene of a murder. He passes by a man, Brad, (Michael Shannon) who mutters to him "razzle dazzle them, razzle dazzle them" and enters the house, seeing a woman with a sword through her. It turns out that the strange man from outside is the murderer, and that the woman inside is his mother. He lives across the street, and starts yelling that he has hostages. In a series of flashbacks, Dafoe's cop interviews the man's fiancé (Chloe Sevigny) and his theater director. After seeing his friends die in a rafting accident after having a premonition about it, the flamingo obsessed Brad returns with the type of grandeur in his motions similar to that of the man he plays in a Sophocles play. With odd detail to Dafoe's interview, which seems more out of pure interest that real, relevant worth, Herzog shows us a descent into insanity that is surrounded by insane notions and gestures. Flamingos, ostrichs, etc. all inhabit the film in the same weird way that Iguanas were intriguing to the cracked-up cop in Herzog's BAD LIEUTENANT. As a serious film, or even one to stand up in Herzog's oeuvre, MY SON MY SON WHAT HAVE YE DONE isn't much. Its insanity, which is the compelling factor of the film, also bogs it down because explanatory sequences can be ostriches. But there's some really great pallid imagery here, which is almost a reason to see the film in itself. Ultimately, the film's pretty fun, and always entertaining.
My Son My Son What Have Ye Done?: ★★★