My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?

MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE? Directed by Werner Herzog. Starring Willem Dafoe, Michael Shannon, Brad Dourif, Chloe Sevigny, Udo Kier, Michael Pena, Grace Zabriskie, Club, Queen's, Belfast, 91 min

THIS SEASON'S most exciting arthouse prospect does not disappoint. How could it? Directed by Werner Herzog and produced by David Lynch, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?offers a defiantly odd, tremendously entertaining take on a strange real-life crime.

On June 10, 1979, Mark Yavorsky, an award-winning actor from the University of San Diego, killed his mother using an antique sabre. In doing so, he re-enacted a scene from Aeschylus's Orestes, a Greek tragedy in which he had been cast as the lead.

If these circumstances weren’t quite weird enough, Herr Herzog, who has lately taken to producing excellent commentaries on America and Americana, has embellished the details in his own inimitable fashion. His Yavorsky (now called Brad McCullum) is a manic maelstrom essayed by the excellent Michael Shannon.

As the film opens, two investigating officers (Willem Dafoe and Michael Peña) arrive at the murder scene to discover that chief suspect McCullum has taken refuge with two hostages in a house across the street. Flashbacks and testimony from McCullum’s baffled girlfriend (Chloë Sevigny) soon coalesces into a portrait of madness.

The killer, we learn, has lately returned from a Peruvian odyssey to the Urubamba River, where Herzog filmed Aguirre, the Wrath of Godand Fitzcarraldo. We learn, too, that our antihero has been taking instruction in the thespian arts from a demented Udo Kier. How could he not go postal?

Herzog revels in the insanity of it all with fellow conspirators Shannon and Dafoe, both of whom channel the bipolar energies of the late Klaus Kinski and make for fascinating, discombobulating company. If that wasn’t enough to recommend the picture, there are subplots involving a basketball, pet flamingoes and an ostrich farm.

No, we don’t know why either. Just go with it.