My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?

Dir: Werner Herzog

2009

****

2009 was a good year. Werner Herzog had waited a couple of years for another feature and suddenly two came along at once, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and the far more Herzog-sounding My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans came with confusion and nervous anticipation as everyone thought it was a remake. It was unconnected, other than having the same name and the same producer but it didn’t stop Abel Ferrara from venting his anger in public and he declined Herzog’s invitation to meet with him for a cup of tea and a chat about it. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? sounded more like a Herzog film, which was exciting, but that wasn’t all – not only was it starring the brilliant up and coming Michael Shannon, it also stared indie favorites Willem Dafoe, Chloë Sevigny, Udo Kier and Brad Dourif – and not only that, it was produced by none other than David Lynch. A Herzog/Lynch production! Cinephile excitement overload was an understatement. It is amazing to think that Herzog had been trying to get the film made since 1995 with no one prepared to back it until Lynch agreed fourteen years later. Herzog described the film as "a horror film without the blood, chainsaws and gore, but with a strange, anonymous fear creeping up in you." That’s about as good a description as I could ever give. It’s Herzog in American suburbia, with a dash of Lynch sprinkled over it for good measure. The film begins with Detective Havenhurst (Willem Dafoe) driving with his partner Detective Vargas (Michael Peña). They receive a call and drive to the scene of a murder. As they push their way through the crowd at the crime scene, they see Brad McCullam (Michael Shannon) leaving with a coffee cup. Inside the house, the detectives find the body of Mrs. McCullam (Grace Zabriskie), Brad's mother, who has just been stabbed with an antique sword. At the scene are the neighbors and chief witnesses, Mrs. and Miss Roberts. The detectives soon realize that they had just seen the murderer leaving the scene. Neighbours tell the detectives that Brad was disturbed and had changed when he went to Peru recently. In a flashback we see Brad in Peru preparing for a kayak trip on a raging river. Back to the present time, the police have learned that Brad has taken two hostages in the house across the street. The police surround the house, and Brad's fiancée Ingrid (Chloë Sevigny) arrives. Ingrid talks to Havenhurst about Brad's trip to Peru, saying that Brad's friends all drowned on their kayak trip, which Brad had decided at the last minute not to take part in; he later claimed that the voice of God had told him to stay behind. Several more flashbacks follow of Brad and Ingrid in Brad's bedroom, talking with Mrs. McCullam, looking at nearby houses, having dinner. Back in the present, Brad demands pizza for himself and the hostages, along with a car for transportation to Mexico. In another flashback, we see Brad in rehearsals for a Greek tragedy directed by thespian Lee Meyers (Udo Kier). As the pizza is delivered to Brad, Lee arrives at the scene of the crime. Lee talks with Havenhurst about Brad and we flash back to Lee and Brad visiting Uncle Ted's (Brad Dourif) ostrich farm. Brad convinces Uncle Ted to give him the antique sword which would be used in the crime. Brad uses the sword in more rehearsals for the play, in which he plays the part of a man who kills his mother, who is played by his fiancée Ingrid. Brad becomes disruptive and is eventually kicked out of the production, but still travels to Calgary with Lee and his mother to attend a performance. A SWAT team arrives to take command of the hostage situation, and the detective talks further with Ingrid and Lee (look out for an early performance by Dave Bautista as a SWAT police officer) . We see a flashback to Brad and Ingrid's trip to Tijuana, after which they go to Bob Wilson Naval Hospital to "visit the sick in general". Brad buys several pillows at the hospital gift shop. Then Brad and Ingrid walk in Balboa Park and Brad gives away his bag of pillows, keeping one, and leaves his basketball in a tree. Back at the crime scene, Havenhurst interviews neighbour Miss Roberts, who had witnessed the crime. In a flashback to the scene just before the murder, we see the Roberts family sitting down with Brad and his mother for coffee. When Brad steps out, his mother tells Mrs. Roberts that Brad has just tried to smother her with a pillow. Brad gets his coffee cup, and then goes to his car and returns with a baseball bat and the sword. He hands the bat to Miss Roberts, saying "Kill me, kill me before it happens". She does nothing, and he draws the sword and holds it in front of his mother. Miss Roberts tells detective Havenhurst that Brad stabbed her, though the murder itself is not shown (big respect to Herzog for that). Ingrid and Lee talk to Brad, urging him to release the hostages and surrender. Ingrid realizes that Brad's hostages are actually his two pet flamingos and the SWAT team moves in and arrests Brad. As Brad is led into the car, we see shots of running ostriches. The final shot is in Balboa Park, where a young boy resembling Brad picks up the basketball. The script began as a project of classics scholar Herbert Golder. Golder was inspired from a young age by Jules Dassin's A Dream of Passion, about an actress playing Medea and a woman who enacts Medea's crimes in her real life. Golder heard about the Mark Yavorsky's case soon after it happened. On June 10, 1979, Mark Yavorsky, an award-winning actor from the University of San Diego, killed his mother using an antique saber. He reenacted, literally, a scene from the Greek tragedy Orestes, a play in which he had been cast as the lead. Golder met with Yavorsky and began a relationship with him that would last several years, conducting a series of taped interviews which would be used to write a screenplay. In 1995, Herzog joined Golder in the last of these meetings. Herzog described Yavorsky, then living in Riverside County, as "argumentative". Yavorsky, living in a trailer, had erected a shrine to Herzog's film Aguirre, the Wrath of God. This concerned Herzog so much that they did not meet again. Herzog, however, was impressed with Golder's project, and told Golder that he wanted to work on the film. The two returned to Herzog's home immediately to finish the screenplay. Herzog said, "You're not leaving until it's finished, and you're not staying longer than a week." Golder and Herzog decided immediately that their film would deviate significantly from Yavorsky's true story. Herzog decided that they "should not connect much to the real man" and that they would focus on Yavorsky's mental state rather than the clinical facts of his case. Several lines of the script were taken verbatim from records of Yavorsky's case, but Herzog has stated that "About 70 percent of the script is false... loosely made up." Notably, Yavorsky's name was changed, and the entire hostage situation was invented (Yavorsky surrendered immediately and took no hostages). Herzog said, "I wanted to do something intelligent where an audience would know three minutes into the film, would know what had happened. An elderly woman had been killed with a sword. Secondly, you would know who the murderer was. And finally you would know where he was. From then on, you do not know what is going to happen one moment after another." It’s far less Columbo like than it sounds. The film's development stagnated for many years after its writing, when Herzog and Golder were unable to find anyone willing to produce it. The production eventually began in the late 2000s at a meeting with Herzog and filmmaker David Lynch. Herzog and Lynch both expressed a desire for, in Herzog's words, "a return to essential film-making" with small budgets, good stories, and the best actors available. Lynch immediately asked "Do you have a project?" and Herzog told him about My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, which began pre-production immediately. The film works so well because everyone involved understood the script and understood Herzog. Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, Udo Kier and the entire cast got Herzog and his vision. It look amazing and the deconstructed style of what is a rather subtle thriller is fresh and invigorating. It had the desired effect and then some. Blood and guts don’t always make for a scary film, it real people who are the most frightening. It’s an unsung masterpiece of frosty terror told in a way that only Herzog could tell. Sometimes its good to be haunted.