My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done? (2010)

Title: My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done (2009)

Director: Werner Herzog

Cast: Michael Shannon, Willem Defoe, Brad Dourif, Chloe Sevigny, Grace Zabriskie, Udo Kier

Review:

“Produced by David Lynch, Directed by Werner Herzog” where the only words I needed to read from the box at the video store. I immediately snatched this movie up, I knew I was up for something weird, bizarre, artistic. After all, these two legendary directors have always specialized in the strange and unusual through out their whole cinematic careers. So I immediately knew I was in for something interesting.

My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done is the story of Brad; a man who is near the brink of completely loosing it. And by loosing it I mean going absolutely bonkers. This guy isn’t ‘loosing it’ in the allegorical sense of the world. Nope, this guy is really going crazy! Brad is the quintessential underachiever; both he and his girlfriend are living with his mother, with no plans of moving out any time soon. His mother is driving him crazy. She’s the kind of mother who still treats her full grown son like a 12 year old. In an attempt to find some meaning to his life, Brad enlists in a drama class. Unfortunately, drama class only fuels his hatred for everything, and gives him ideas on how to go about murdering his own mother. Based on a real life story!

The Man, the myth, the legend, Werner Herzog

“Sometimes truth is stranger then fiction” this is a phrase that can aptly be used to describe the films of director Werner Herzog. Herzog has always been a director who enjoys blurring the lines between reality and fiction in his films. He looks for real life stories that are amazing, and then turns them into a film or a documentary. Or both. This was the case with the story of Dieter Dengler, a man who survived the horrors of war and lived to tell the tale. Herzog found the story so interesting that he made a documentary about it called Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997). Years later, Herzog made the film version of that story called Red Dawn (2006) starring Steve Zahn and Christian Bale. But his documentaries aren’t entirely reality; they always have something of fiction in them in a way. Sometimes he uses visuals in his documentaries to manipulate the audiences’ perceptions of what they are seeing. And the same can be said of his films, sometimes they are based on real life stories, but they don’t stick one hundred percent to the real story that they are based on. This blurring of the lines between reality and fiction continues yet again with My Son, My Son, a film which according to Herzog himself is 70 percent false or loosely made up. So we are not getting the story behind Mark Yavorsky’s dementia 100%. It’s a film loosely based on his life.

Mark Yovorsky is a man who murdered his own mother with a sword, he did time in jail for his crime, and now he is out. The writer of this film Herbert Golder had been interested in developing this story into a feature film for many years, interviewing Yovorsky, gathering information and finally, contacting Herzog himself so he could direct the film. Herzog agreed to make the film and at one point decided to visit Yavorsky’s trailer home, just so he could get a more realistic background for the character. Funny thing is that even though Herzog is known for making films filled with weird characters and situations, he was actually freaked out by the real life Yavorsky! He walked into the guys trailer home, and immediately decided to leave, he said to himself that being there just didn’t feel right. The guy freaked Herzog out, that’s how you know the guy has got to be crazy as hell! I mean, if you freak Herzog out, you know there’s something wrong with ya.

So anyhow, in the film, Mark Yavorsky is played by Michael Shannon who seems to be the current go to guy if you want a nutcase in your movie. Check out his performance in Revolutionary Road (2008) to see what I mean. But his performance on My Son, My Son is his most demented yet. He plays a guy who is really disconnected from society; an outcast. Brad is the kind of guy who hates everything he sees in the world, and therefore is always angry or upset. He goes into sudden bursts of anger and violence. He is preoccupied with the existence of god and with religion. He is definitely portrayed as a character whose mind has been distorted and corroded by Christianity. His questioning of reality, and god and the meaning of it all, has driven him to insanity. Shannon does a memorable performance, makes one think of those demented performances that Klaus Kinski used to do for Herzog. One has to wonder how Klaus Kinski would have played this role had he been alive and in his prime.

The definition of a disfunctional family

But Michael Shannon is no stranger to Herzog’s brand of bizarre cinema; he had worked previously with Herzog on Bad Lieutent: Port of Call New Orleans (2009). He isn’t the only Herzog regular on My Son, My Son. This film is filled with many Herzog and Lynch regulars. We have Brad Dourif (who has collaborated with Herzog on three occasions) playing Brads demented homophobic uncle. Dourif’s character lets us see just why Brad is so crazy, I mean with family members like these, who wouldn’t go nuts? The same can be said for Grace Zabriskie who plays Brad’s mom. She freaked me out in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990) and Inland Empire (2006) her effect on this movie is pretty much the same. She still freaks me the hell out! The film is filled with a who’s who of eccentric character actors. Lot’s of odd looking faces. Both Lynch and Herzog enjoy using actors with odd features, which is why we get so many of them on this film. They united forces and gathered strange looking individuals from both of their usual gang of actors. As a result we get Willem Defoe (who’d collaborated with Lynch on Wild at Heart) and Chloe Sevigny, who is no stranger to bizarre cinema. Don’t believe me check her out in Gummo (1997). It’s no surprise she is known as the “queen of independent cinema”. We even have Udo Kier on this movie!

I have always liked Herzog’s attitude towards filmmaking. He doesn’t seem to believe in huge budgets and big stars. Actually, part of Lynch’s and Herzog’s attitude with this project was to make a “return to essential filmmaking”. Filmmaking that focuses on story, performances, and on saying something. Not on how big a budget is, or what big Hollywood star is in it. Both directors aimed to work with a low budget while still producing a high quality film. And I have to say they achieved it. Herzog has never been a director one would associate with horror films, I mean, the closest he ever got to that was when he made his Nosferatu (1979) remake. But with My son, My son, Herzog has made what he calls himself “a horror film without the gore, the chainsaws or the gore” and here comes the good part: “but with a strange anonymous fear creeping up on you” Amen to that Herzog! Amen to that!

Rating: 4 out of 5

#1 of the Top Five Bizarro Films Countdown!

The Celluloid Highway's # 1 Bizarro Film: EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL (Werner Herzog, West Germany, 1970)

The films of Werner Herzog (both fiction and non-fiction) abound with strange and surreal imagery (usually involving animals) that it is hard to imagine any list of weird or bizarre movies without an entry for this very idiosyncratic Bavarian filmmaker. Although he remade the silent expressionistic horror classic Nosferatu in 1979, it is this his second feature film that most effectively approximates the disorder, anarchy and sense of unease of horror. That few films within the horror genre itself succeed in this is a testament to the difficulty of pulling off such a feat. Herzog partially succeeds through the casting - this is a film in which every part is played by those suffering from dwarfism. This immediately situates us in territory that is unusual - with the ever present spectre of possible exploitation making this a very unsafe and troubling viewing experience. Herzog’s first feature film Signs of Life (1968) had received much critical acclaim on the festival circuit (even managing to secure the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Awards) so few would have been prepared for this peculiar comedy of manners with the oppressive atmosphere of slowly encroaching horror. The film is set in an unnamed institution that has the feel of a correctional facility. No explanation is given as to why the inhabitants are there, and very little is offered as to why they suddenly decided to rebel against the authority of the institution. The important thing is that they do rebel - because this is an allegory of liberation, and easily one of the most overtly political statements Herzog has ever made. That there is no overpowering evidence that the inhabitants are oppressed only adds to the disturbing ways in which the rebellion manifests itself. Before long this particular act of insurgence is perverted and becomes depraved and chaotic. A crucified monkey offers a disconcerting image of religious symbolism toward the end, and the kneeling camel is equally disquieting. Herzog’s passion for circularity is in evidence as a car goes round and round in circles offering a bleak statement on the futility of the behaviour we are seeing. This is all married to weird ethnic and tribal music, black and white cinematography, and the desolate volcanic landscape of Lanzarote (it appears here long before this became a popular tourist destination). This film is very hard work indeed. Its weirdness is palpable from the outset, but should you persevere and reach the end credits you’ll have experienced a profound but challenging essay on prejudice, difference, tolerance and a gloomy fable about the various political rebellions in the world at the time.

The Film Connoisseur’s #1 Bizarro Film: GUMMO (Harmony Korine, U.S.A., 1997)

It’s interesting that a lot of the films we’ve mentioned on this countdown have had some similarities in them. One of them is that films of this nature almost never subscribe to the tired and true linear way telling a film. These filmmaker’s are rebellious in nature, rejecting the common way in which things are done. This is partially the reason why I love these kinds of films. They break the norm, go against the rules and do things in an entirely different way. Gummo, my #1 Bizarro film is this kind of film. It’s episodic in nature, and feels so real that you don’t feel like you are watching actors or a traditional movie at all. You feel like you are watching, ugly, real life. Harmony Korine’s Gummo is about young kids trying to survive in a suburban white thrash nightmare. People on this film are living in the most poverty stricken conditions you can imagine! Korine’s film garnered a lot of criticism because it showed these characters doing truly insane things under the nastiest, ugliest most inhuman conditions. Yet, this is precisely the reason why I admire this film so much. I mean, why hide this type of thing from the world? These kinds of people exist in the U.S.A. These kinds of neighborhoods are out there in Middle America. Some might choose to ignore this fact, like an ugly family secret, but me, I’m all about exposing the truth about things, making people wake up! The interesting part about this movie is that director Harmony Korine opted to film in a real poor neighborhood in Nashville Tennessee; and he chose real people to appear in the film. Only three real actors were used in the making of the film (Including Korines then girlfriend Chloe Sevigny) , the rest are real people from his home town. As a result of this most of the situations you see in Gummo are not scripted or even rehearsed, so they feel more genuine. This is the kind of film that makes you wonder if what you are seeing was scripted or if it really happened on camera. The answer is that it’s a mix of both. Sometimes Korine would just let the cameras role and let the magic happen right in front of them. I admire Korine for this because when you watch Gummo, you never wonder off or get bored, you remain glued to the screen for its whole duration. You know what they say: “sometimes truth is stranger than fiction” and this is precisely the case with Gummo. A lot (and I do mean a lot) of what you see on screen is improvised. These are real people, talking real things. Korine wanted to capture poverty and mental instability in its purest form, and I honestly think he succeeded. The characters in Gummo live under such dire conditions that they end up doing the strangest things, like hunting cats to sell them to a local restaurant, spending their money on sniffing glue. These characters are not characters with clear cut moral values, these are individuals with problems, individuals willing to do anything to survive. This is the kind of film that people actually walked out of during its presentation on the Telluride Film Festival. Apparently, people can’t take the truth! It is a sad world we live in when a film that is sincere and truthful, is rejected. Yes the film touches some very strong themes, but hey, that’s life, and life isn’t always pretty. Aside from all these ugly truths that the film exposes, the film is so visually interesting! There is beauty amongst all the filth and violence. The colors, the look of the characters, the dialog, you can tell a talented filmmaker is behind the camera orchestrating everything. It is that kind of movie that is both repulsive and beautiful to look at. It will most likely get an immediate response out of you. It isn’t concerned with pleasing anybody, it simply wants to show life the way it is. Gummo defies you to accept that. It is shocking, it is ugly, but it’s honest at heart.

Well, thats it boys and girls. I hope you have enjoyed this countdown. It wasnt easy coming up with top five bizarre movies, and a lot of films were left out, but rest assured, another blog post on "bizarre films" will appear soon that speaks about all the other films that were left out. Films were left out not because they werent bizarre or good, but just because there are so many good ones! So look out for that future post.

This countdown was done in collaboration with Shaun Aunderson's excellent film review blog The Celluloid Highway, dont forget to visit his blog and check it out, its worth it! Also, I want to thank Shaun for participating on these countdowns which I personally find extremely fun and informative. Thanks Shaun! And thanks to all those who commented on our choices and offered up some suggestions of their own.

Grizzly Man (2005)

Title: Grizzly Man (2005)

Director: Werner Herzog

Starring: Timothy Tredwell

Review:

In his films, German director Werner Herzog loves to exalt and focus on the natural beauty of the wild. He loves to impress us with the most wondrous locations and vistas in his films, as if saying “See? You don’t need to spend millions of dollars building sets! It’s all out there for us in nature! For free!” Many of his productions have been filmed in the wildest and most outlandish locations, from the dense rain forests of the Peruvian jungle, to Brazil, Colombia and Ghana. For this reason I find it fitting that it was Werner Herzog who ended up making Grizzly Man. This documentary takes place almost entirely in the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, amongst the grizzly bears and the foxes, and one Timothy Tredwell.

Director Werner Herzog

Most of this documentary was shot by Timothy Tredwell, a bear enthusiast. The rest of the documentary is Herzog interviewing people and friends who knew Tredwell personally. If you ask me, I think he was more then a bear enthusiast. He was also an extreme environmentalist, an “eco warrior” and by pure happenstance he also became a documentary filmmaker. He wanted to become an actor, but he failed at that. According to the documentary Tredwell’s parents mention that he did audition for a role in the popular 80’s sitcom Cheers, but he was beaten by Woody Harrelson for the part. That destroyed him, and he became a drug addict. He ended up almost dying from a heroin overdose. After that, he decided to do something positive with his life, so he decided to go live amongst the bears in the wild. Once he had his first encounter with a bear, he knew that that’s what he wanted to do with his life. He documented his travels to the wild for 13 years before a bear killed him and his girlfriend.

What Tredwell did is apparently not an isolated incident. This running off into the wild, escaping from society and modern life and disappearing into the wilderness is apparently a phenomenon that has occurred quite a few times. Often times, this decision to live in the wilderness ends with death. The movie Into the Wild (2007) directed by Sean Penn and starring Emil Hersh was based on a similar story of a young man called Christopher McCandless. He also chose to escape society to go and live in the wild. And he also ended up dying because of this decision; he ate poisonous weeds that ended up killing him. Lesson learned? If we are not careful, nature can bite us in the ass. We should never underestimate it, which in my opinion is what happened to Timothy Tredwell and the bears. In a way it feels like modern living has castrated us, detached us from nature so much that we can no longer just live amongst it. Nature is wild and fierce and it has no remorse, no compassion, and as we can see in both of these films, nature can be deadly.

But I get what Tredwell was doing. I get what McCandless did as well. These are just humans who want to disconnect entirely from society. They want to turn their backs on everything that is established because they are simply not happy with the way things are. Their solution is to simply turn their backs on everything and literally run to the hills. The problem is that you cannot just survive in the wild without making some preparations. And you cannot underestimate the hunger of a wild beast! I think the problem Timothy Tredwell had was that he thought he could make a connection with a killer animal, a meat eater; an animal who has no problems whatsoever with ripping your head off. If you ask me, Tredwell might as well have been trying to make friends with a wild lion or a shark. He had this idealistic mentality towards bears. He thought that simply by talking nicely to them, that he would connect with them. He knew he was close to death, he knew these animals were dangerous, but he decided to ignore this anyway.

They address this issue in the documentary as well, but I do agree he was having a religious experience with the bears. He saw them as his gods, his saviors. Tredwell was a drug addict who escaped his addiction by replacing it with his contact with nature. The bears were Tredwell’s own personal Jesus Christ. Only, he could actually see and touch his gods! This idealization of the beasts is what brought him to his death, he forgot these animals have a killer instinct within them. They are predators, and we humans, are the prey. No matter how nicely you talk to them when hunger strikes, your going to start looking mighty juicy to those bears. There is a scene that Tredwell caught on tape where two bears are beating the crap out of each other and it was at that moment that I said, this guy is crazy! I would never be there! So close! I mean, these two bears where ripping themselves apart! You can see in that footage how powerful these creatures truly are, and if they can do that to themselves, well, it kind of makes you wonder what they could do to you if they got hungry enough.

When ever anyone mentioned this documentary to me, I thought it would just be about a guy living amongst bears and his obsession with them. But its so much more then that. Through the more then 90 hours he shot of himself with the animals, we get to know who he was and what a sad, lonely and fractured soul he was. He was a very sensitive person, more then most people dare to show and he had no problems in expressing his emotions on his videos. Since he was so alone most of the time, his footage turned into confessional. He would talk to himself while looking at the camera and analyze his life. There are some truly touching and extremely truthful moments on this film. Tredwell’s footage is like life, a little crazy, a little tragic, and sometimes incredibly beautiful. It this documentary achieves one thing, its that. It lets us understand that life is made up of the ugly, the beautiful, the horrifying and the mystical all wrapped up in one.

There’s a moment, where Tredwell befriends a group of foxes that’s so touching, so magical. You see Tredwell running with these incredibly beautiful foxes through the grass, and the mountains in the background and the beautiful day, and for a moment I got Tredwell. I understood why he did what he did. He must have felt completely free in that wilderness, completely cut off from cars, and traffic jams, wars, toxic waste, famine, poverty, racism, classism, abusive governments, garbage, consumerism, commercials…and all those things that can sometimes make living in the mist of our society a little difficult. Tredwell was a humanist, looking for freedom and peace in this world. Can’t say I blame him for that. Its just that, had it been me, I would have been just a little more respectful of nature that’s all.

Still, it’s amazing how he caught everything on tape. And it’s a very sincere and truthful documentary. You kind of get the feeling sometimes that Tredwell wasn’t really grasping the reality of his situation. It feels like he had some fantasy idea of what a bear really is, and didn’t really grasp how deadly nature can be. You get the feeling that the guy had some sort of death wish. He was depressed, and loneliness was getting to him. In one of his confessional moments, he asks himself why girls didn’t stay too long with him. Was it because he was too sentimental and that this turned girls off? Why couldn’t they accept him for who he was? He even questions the existence of god in some scenes! There are some powerful moments on this documentary, highly recommended to anyone who hasn’t seen it.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Rescue Dawn (2007)

Title: Rescue Dawn (2007)

Director: Werner Herzog

Review:

Werner Herzog’s style of filmmaking is a very interesting one. He doesn’t seem to believe in relying on special effects to transport us anywhere. If he wants his film to take place in the middle of the Amazon Jungle, he’ll take his cast and crew and film the movie in the freaking Amazon. For real. He did it in Fitzcarraldo. He did it yet again in Aguirre: The Wrath of God. Hell, Cobra Verde took place in Africa, and guess where he shot that one? That’s right; the guy went to Africa and shot the film with hundreds of African extras. They guy is a very committed filmmaker and the results are often times incredibly rewarding. He transports us to places that no special effect can. This is one of the main reasons I hold Herzog in such high regard. I often ask myself why so many filmmakers rely so heavily in fake sets and computer animation nature holds the best sets in the world. And they are for free! Herzog knows this and uses it to his advantage in his films.

This film, Rescue Dawn, is based on the real life exploits of Deiter Dengler, a U.S Navy Pilot who crashed landed in the middle of the Vietnamese jungle during the Vietnam war. He tries to escape but is taken prisoner by some Vietnamese soldiers and taken to a prison camp where other soldiers and pilots are being held prisoners as well. Together they try to survive the physical and psychological torture that they get subjected by the Vietnamese soldiers.

Deiter Dengler and Werner Herzog had known each other for years before this film came along. In 1997 Herzog made a documentary based on Denglers true life story called Little Dieter Needs to Fly, which I haven’t seen yet, but will definitely be checking out now that I’ve seen Rescue Dawn.

One thing that surprised me about this film was that Herzog actually used digital effects on this film. Its something he had never before recurred to in any of his films, not even in films you would expect him to use them in like for example Nosferatu: Symphony of the Night. But I guess the cgi effects were justified: the planes that were needed for the scene no longer existed, so he had to orchestrate the whole crash sequence with the aid of CGI. Another thing was that he shot the film in Thailand, when the story really took place in Vietnam. Also understandable since I doubt the Vietnamese would let him film there, considering the film portrays them as heartless savages using torture techniques on their prisoners of war.

A film like this relies heavily on its performances, and having Christian Bale on its cast didn’t hurt the film at all. As always, Bale dives entirely into character becoming completely unrecognizable. I’m always amazed at how Bale can do this, but all of his performances are different. Every character he has played is unique somehow. He did it again with this film. Deiter Dangler is an inventive guy, a survivor, and a guy who keeps his spirits up no matter how deep “in the shit” he is. I loved his character. Steve Zahn also outdoes himself in this, one of his few dramatic performances. Normally, Zahn is in comedy films, but here he dives deep into a dramatic role. Both actors went through heavy weight loss to effectively portray these prisoners of war. Bale lost 55 pounds! Steve Zahn lost 40! Jeremy Davies lost 33! And Werner Herzog, not wanting to be left out and as an act of solidarity lost 30 pounds himself!

I have to admire these two guys, they really got into it. There’s scenes where the two characters are aimlessly wondering through the jungle, and you just know they are really in there amongst all those insects, snakes, plants…a deadly environment, and they really went into it. Bale and Zahn really did swim through a snake infested jungle! Herzog just loves making his actors really live through an experience, this often times turns in a real reactions from the actors and in turn, this gives us the audience a more credible and genuine performance. This was the case in this film as well! Bale and Zahn have to make their way through a thick jungle, get drenched in the monsoon. They even get leaches stuck on them! I do not doubt that these were real! Sucking the blood out of these actors! There’s a scene where the prisoners have to eat worms to survive, and Bale really dove into that opportunity, going down in cinematic history with other actors who have eaten worms and roaches, like Nicholas Cage in Vampire's Kiss, where Cage ate a cockroach on camera. Bale really gorged on those worms Ill tell you that. We all know how Bale can just dive into a character. Some of you might remember how he underwent heavy weight loss for The Machinist. His weight loss for that film was actually kind of scary, at times looking like a walking skeleton. I’m sure Herzog recognized this trait in Bale. I’m thinking Herzog saw in Christian Bale the kind of actor that goes all the way with his performances, doing whatever has to be done to make his performance that much more believable. And I’m sure that’s why he ended up doing this film.

So this is one of those movies where the human spirit triumphs over incredibly difficult situations, where the only thing that kept Dieter Dengler alive was his hope and his will to survive. It reminded me a bit of Frank Marshall’s Alive! (1993) which is also an incredible true life story of survival under circumstances where you think the characters will not be surviving. Yet they do. An inspiring film, that speaks of the horrors of war. It makes you think about how absurd it all is, were all humans after all, living on the same planet, flying on this big blue spaceship we call earth. Why can’t we all just get along?

Rating: 5 out of 5