Werner Herzog: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

Luckily, while performing jury duty I didn't have to deal with anything quite so bizarre as the events that "transgress" in Herzog's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. This film is offbeat enough to wander if a question mark should be included in the title. It appears that sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't, depending on where and how you look.

The director, producer and primary actors were enough to get me to watch it asap, if not stat. However, it is a pretty low-key film when all is said and done. I enjoyed it -- of course -- particularly its meandering imagery and special Herzog touches (such as a little person standing on the stump of a gargantuan Redwood tree, a basketball set in the branches of a small tree with San Diego's skyline across a highway in the backdrop, and an unruly ostrich farm. Plus the music: weird.)

The film works in such a way that several scenes stick in memory far more sneakily than a first watch might suggest. Then again, this is often true of Herzog's work.

Besides Werner Herzog as director and co-writer (with Herbert Golder), My Son was produced by David Lynch; actors include a Grade A list fresh from the darkness on the edge of town: Michael Shannon (pictured above), Grace Zabriskie (pictured above), Chloë Sevigny (pictured above), Willem Dafoe, Michael Peña, Brad Dourif, Irma P. Hall and Udo Kier.

Today's Rune: Movement.