Review of My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2010) by Artful ? — 26 Sep 2010
How do use a conventional scale to criticize a film that clearly holds no regard for cinematic convention? Thankfully, enough arrogance and emptiness abound here to simplify this task. Werner Herzog and David Lynch (a couple auteurs that I (usually) am a fan of) collaborate to tell the story of a man who murders his mother with a sword, and the police who try to unravel the story as they wait outside of his house to arrest him.
There are a lot of flashbacks, flamingos, stilted dialogue, and stupid scenes of the actors holding a pose for several seconds, as if freeze-framed. It's bizarre enough that if I had found it on network television, on a weekday afternoon, I'd probably be intrigued enough to linger on it for a while.
Yes, bizarre enough to suck me in on network television, perhaps, but instead, making the choice to sit down and watch this "film," it all seemed a little safe and stupid. There's nothing going on of actual interest, no sense of danger or mystery, no character depth, just a lot of overlong scenes and cliched explanations for his psychopathic behavior.
There's nothing more arrogant than a couple of filmmakers putting their heads together with nothing to show for it, just some not-so-bizarre ideas that they play off to be avant garde. It's not.
It just sucks.
This review of My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2010) was written by Artful ? on 26 Sep 2010.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done has generally received mixed reviews.
Was this review helpful?
