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MovieMail's Review
For some reason, Herzog's companion film to Bad Lieutenant hasn't received much attention. But it's a similarly bewildering shaggy dog story, full of wit and lunacy and peculiar animals – flamingoes and ostriches this time round. It's also produced by David Lynch, and if the combination of Lynch and Herzog doesn't get your mouth watering (and mind boggling), then cinema may not be your thing.
The narrative adopts a Citizen Kane-like structure as cop Willem Dafoe tries to piece together from witnesses' stories why a budding young actor has run his mother through with a sword. The result is a portrait of the everyday world as hopelessly insane, where an average joe becomes an Aguirre-style visionary and cops approaching a hostile gunman, hands held aloft, look as if they're at an evangelical rally. Michael Shannon is magnificently eerie as the killer, yet at the same time, genuinely sympathetic, so much so that the film also acts as a surprisingly tender account of mental instability.
It's not Herzog's best work, but it's definitely worth a watch. And the flamingoes are fabulous.
The first collaboration between legendary filmmakers David Lynch and Werner Herzog, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is loosely based on the harrowing true story of a San Diego man whose mystifying experiences in Peru lead him to slay his own mother with a sword.
After the murder, Willem Dafoe's detective Hank Havenhurst and his team search for the reasons behind the Brad McCullum's act, delving into the mind of the killer. Chloe Sevigny also stars as Brad's girlfriend, Ingrid.
