Thursday, September 8, 2011

MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE (2009)

Razzle them. Dazzle them. Razzle dazzle them.’
That’s what Werner Herzog has been doing on screen since the day he started film-making.  Inspired on true story this is another unexceptional under noticed Herzog film that he has made recently. Complex and unusual character and chaos are Herzog’s panache. The protagonist of the film is complex and unusual young man who stabbed and killed his own mother and than held two unknown hostages in a barricaded house to keep the cops out of his home. The mother was too caring and over protective one and he loved her too. So than what went wrong with the man or what made him turned to this madness. One does not expect the direct and easy answer to that from Herzog film! Through several flashbacks and situational incidents of his life told by his fiancée and a play director, we see the enigma of this inscrutable man who loves flamingoes and who claimed to have seen god. He started getting strange, they said, either after his river rafting expedition trip to Peru with friends or that passionate role playing of classical Greek tragedy that drawn him to brooding crime.

‘Some people act a role, others play a part’ said Michael Shannon and at other point he said, ‘I’m not going to discover my boundaries. I am going to stunt my inner growth.’ And he played his character so brilliantly. There’s not much to deliver as Herzog deliberately skipped explaining him directly in the most part of the film and still through his body language and expressions Shannon makes an impressive act. There is one absolute Herzog moment in the film which I loved so much. Watch the moment where Shannon ridiculously try that futile act of moving down on escalating stairs running upside and watching those unending round frames he said that it’s tunnel of time and perfect stage for cosmic melodrama. What a brilliant punch!

Only one complain-can’t it end better than this! As some of Herzog masterpieces are just irreplaceable for its striking end-part.  

Ratings-7.5/10 

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