Why is the world staring at me?

Under the banner of “David Lynch presents a Werner Herzog film,”My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done may invoke slightly misdirected expectations from audiences. While there are Lynchian aspects to My Son, My Son in terms of cinematic weirdness, it is by no means a Lynchian film. While Lynch produced the film, it was a Boston University College of Arts and Sciences professor, Herb Golder, who collaborated with Herzog on the screenplay, which centers on the eccentric Brad McCullum (Michael Shannon). The story and character are based off a true crime that took place 13 years before the film’s release.

There are elements to My Son, My Son that strictly follow the police procedural movie: a man commits matricide, slaying his mother at home with a samurai sword, and police come to investigate the crime scene. Brad, the half-crazed, shotgun-wielding man, holes up in his San Diego residence, with two hostages. Detective Hank Havenhurst (Willem Dafoe) leads the investigation by inquiring into Brad’s past, and the film unravels in flashbacks, but only seemingly so.

What Herzog’s new film does exceptionally well is to bring into question the fundamental value of a story centered on questioning the motives of a criminal. In a pivotal scene of the film, Brad looks to the camera and repeatedly asks, “Why is the world staring at me?” It’s as though Brad questions the entire tradition of storytelling,as if to ask why a movie is being made about him.Why should his very private act of killing his mother interest such a spectacle as a movie?

Brad’s words can’t lend an audience any further understanding of who he is, or even what his words signify, but they do allow audiences to feel a sense of awe &-&- to arrive at the end that no one life can be illuminated by a person’s spoken words, nor by the actions this said person commit. Such realizations are at the heart of Herzog’s new movie.