A caring son

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title A caring son
Original title My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
Country of production USA , Germany
original language English
Publishing year 2009
length 91 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Werner Herzog
script Herbert Golder ,
Werner Herzog
production Eric Bassett
music Ernst Reijseger
camera Peter Zeitlinger
cut Joe Bini ,
Omar Hence
occupation
synchronization

A Caring Son ( My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done ) is a film by director Werner Herzog . It was the first collaboration between Herzog and filmmaker David Lynch who produced the film. The idea for My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? comes from Herbert Golder, who wrote the script together with Herzog. The drama is based on a true story: Mark Yavorsky, a highly gifted and athletically and artistically successful student, stabbed his own mother with an antique sword in a moment of mental derangement.

action

The veteran Detective Havenhurst and the novice Detective Vargas are interrupted while exchanging anecdotes: A murder has been reported. While the police meticulously inspect and catalog the crime scene, the murder case also appears to have turned into a hostage situation. The quickly identified culprit, the student Brad Macallam, holed up in his home after he had previously killed his mother with a saber in a neighboring house . Macallam claims he has two hostages with him. The police force is increased and Macallam's fiancée Ingrid Gudmundson is notified. Havenhurst tries through Ingrid to learn more about the perpetrator and what may have prompted him to kill his mother. She says Brad came back completely different from a rafting trip in Peru . Macallam's friends drowned in the river at the time, Brad was the only one spared because an inner voice had given him the order not to go into the rapid river with his kayak . This experience marked the beginning of his visions and his little by little loss of reality. From then on he followed his inner voice. Soon after, Brad called himself Farouk and claimed to hear the voice of God or see God's face. His behavior showed itself above all in a kind of mystical narcissism when Brad believed more and more often that he was the absolute anchor point of space and time. He had an ambivalent relationship with his mother because she was very clingy and wanted to rule over his life. But he loved his mother despite everything. Then Lee Meyers arrives, who leads Brad's drama company. He testifies that Macallam called him that morning and desperately asked for help without clearly saying what it was about. Ingrid and Meyers tell Havenhurst about the performance of the ancient play Orestie , directed by Meyers. Macallam played the mother-murderer Orestes in the drama . Ingrid also appeared in the Greek play. Brad saw himself as in the ultimate exceptional position. He got into the role so much and identified himself with the tragic figure of Orestes that he believed he had to kill his own mother in order to steer the fate of humanity in the right direction. During the rehearsals he then used a real sword, which caused great discomfort in the other actors, so that Meyers ultimately took his role away from him.

Ingrid says that shortly before the crime he turned to her and the Meyers game director for help without them understanding what he wanted. He had also asked the neighbor Mrs. Roberts, who was an eyewitness, to stop him by killing him so that he wouldn't have to do what he really didn't want to do. The guests of the coffee group would have watched helplessly and paralyzed as Macallam stabbed his mother with the saber he used during theater rehearsals. At that moment he saw himself as a tool of fate. Access by the SWAT team and Macallam's arrest reveals that a dozen police officers and a heavily armed special unit had been fooled by Macallam. His so-called hostages are two flamingos . People weren't in danger.

background

The film is based on the true story of the mother killer Mark Yavorsky. Yavorsky was a graduate student, successfully played basketball, and was considered a passionate amateur actor at the University of San Diego . The student killed his mother with an antique saber on June 10, 1979. He followed her to a neighbor to whom she had fled. The offender was found insane by the judge and therefore not responsible for his crime and was admitted to Patton State Hospital. Yavorsky had stated that he did not want to expose his mother to an imminent nuclear holocaust. The young man had changed more and more since his stay in Peru, similar to the one shown in the film, and another trigger for this act was the student performance of the Oresty . Herbert Golder, professor of ancient literature at Boston University , was interested in this case of contemporary tragedy that seems ancient. Together with Werner Herzog, he began writing the script in 1995. The film could only be financed with the help of David Lynch. As a co-producer, he has left his signature both directly and indirectly. For example, the casting of Brad's mother with Grace Zabriskie is due to Lynch's influence. But especially stylistically, some elements of the film are based on Lynch's work.

Further flashbacks take the viewer to Macallam's uncle's chicken and ostrich farm, as well as Canada , Tijuana and the Navy Hospital, where his father died. Again and again, Herzog mixes set pieces and quotes from his previously created works into this film.

The Point Loma film was shot very close to Yavorsky's real home. Further recordings were made at Urubamba in Peru, where Herzog had already shot his films Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo . For safety reasons, Herzog decided not to shoot at Braldu in Pakistan , where Yavorsky's change of heart had really started. Another sequence was shot in Kashgar in Xinjiang , China .

In the audio commentary on the film, Herzog says that his films and those of Lynch “don't talk to each other, but dance with each other.” He explicitly connects the role of Frank between a scene in which a jogger can be seen wearing a breathing mask Booth ( Dennis Hopper ) in Blue Velvet . If you take a closer look, you can see further references. The scene in which Brad and his uncle Ted ( Brad Dourif ) talk about a fictional commercial for his giant chickens is sure to catch the eye . The lack of contextual reference is supported stylistically by the recording in a completely snow-covered landscape. If you also consider that there is a short guy in a suit in the scene, parallels to the Red Room from Twin Peaks cannot be denied.

References to the Oresty of the ancient Greek tragedy poet Aeschylus are also recognizable: In this work Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia , which is why Clytaimnestra , Iphigenie's mother, kills her husband Agamemnon after his return from the Trojan War; the same goes for his beloved Cassandra . The son Orestes then kills the mother Clytaimnestra and her lover Aigisthos with the help of his sister Elektra (Mycenae) . Orestes is not punished with death for this, as it would actually be customary; the spirits of revenge ( Erinyes ) can rather be appeased in a court case. In the event of a tie, the goddess Athena pronounces the verdict (acquittal) and the curse that lies on the family of the Atrids is broken.

synchronization

The German dubbing was done by the dubbing company Christa Kistner, Synchronproduktion GmbH, Potsdam, dialogue script and dialogue director: Joachim Kunzendorf.

role actor Voice actor
Brad Macallum Michael Shannon Sascha Rotermund
Detective Hank Havenhurst Willem Dafoe Wolfgang Condrus
Detective Vargas Michael Peña Tobias Müller
Ingrid Gudmundson Chloë Sevigny Berenice Weichert
Lee Meyers Udo Kier Udo Kier
Miss Roberts Loretta Devine Ulrike Möckel
Mrs. Macallum Grace Zabriskie Kornelia buoy
Mrs. Roberts Irma P. Hall Luise Lunow
Uncle Ted Brad Dourif Hans-Jürgen Dittberner
SWAT Commander Brown James C. Burns Frank Röth
Receptionist Jenn Liu Magdalena Turba

Reviews

Reviews for My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done are mixed. The film scored a 50%, or 5.8 / 10, rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 40 reviews . Jeff Shannon of the Seattle Times called the film "Duke's quirky misfire," while Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said the film "messes with convention and does not serve any of the expected pleasures, but instead offers the joy of watching how Herzog feeds the mixer of his imagination with the 'police-and-hostage-taker scheme'. "

Robert Zimmermann from critic.de was of the opinion that My Son My Son, What Have Ye Done provided no explanations and that the actually poetic overall picture only remained emotionally comprehensible, which also resulted in a certain relationship to the paranoia cinema of David Lynch, which was not It was a coincidence that Lynch was the executive producer on this remarkable film.

Filmgazette.de said that Herzog's ensemble showed a rare joy in playing. [...] People's irritated looks at the actor and directly into the camera are real and make Brad's paranoia easy to understand.

Das Erste .de, which broadcast the film under the German title Ein fürsorglicher Sohn , found that Werner Herzog was depicting scenes of a life that got out of hand in a meditative tone and with masterful staging. Inspired by a real case, he developed the atmospheric character study of a gunman, impersonated by Michael Shannon.

Publications

The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival on September 5, 2009. After only a few festival and cinema screenings, the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on November 18, 2010.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for a Caring Son . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , June 2010 (PDF; test number: 123 317 V).
  2. ↑ a b My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done at critic.de. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
  3. ↑ My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done at filmstarts.de. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
  4. ↑ Behind the Madness: The Making of My Son, My Son, bonus material on the DVD edition of My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
  5. ↑ a b My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done at negativ-film.de. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
  6. ↑ a b c My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done "Brad and how he sees the world" at filmgazette.de. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
  7. ↑ Eric Basset, Herbert Golder, Werner Herzog, audio commentary on the DVD edition of My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
  8. ↑ My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done at synchronous files. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
  9. ↑ My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done at Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved September 10, 2012.
  10. ^ A caring son - My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done ( Memento from August 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) at daserste.de.
  11. ^ 'La Biennale 66th International Film Festival, September 2–12, 2009 Screenings' , La Biennale, accessed September 10, 2012

Web links