My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

OK, maybe you have to be a Herzog fan to get this one. In its small and quiet way it's a classic Herzogian study of visionary madness and obsession, played out this time with mordant irony against the blandness of suburban San Diego. Brad, a brooding man-child who lives with his mom, gradually goes nuts, saying and doing increasingly unhinged (and funny) things to his clueless loved ones, played by goofy character actors like Udo Kier, Grace Zabriskie and Chloe Sevigny. Willem Dafoe plays the equally clueless detective called in when Brad, inevitably, explodes in a single (off-screen) act of violence. All the usual Herzog flourishes are here, though often played small: odd animals, oddball people, grimly threatening nature, useless bureaucratic procedures, civilization and its hapless inhabitants struggling to maintain order and etiquette in the face of the world's natural madness, violence and chaos. It's a wacky, Herzogian comedy of manners, very much in the tradition of many of his films from Dwarfs through Stroszek to Grizzly Man. If you like Herzog you'll probably like it; if not, maybe not.