just as miserable to read as stream of consciousness novels, this kind of stream of consciousness movies are often the most confusing to the audience after watching them, not to mention that they are still in the air. Even without English subtitles, I didn't know the plot at all before.
This film is produced by David Lynch (David Lynch), written and directed by Werner Herozog (Herzog), starring Michael Shannon, so it can be said that the style of the whole film is influenced by these three people. All parts have seen the shadows of some of the works of the trio in their previous film careers.
Michael Shannon became famous in Hollywood after he played the little supporting role in Revolutionary Road (the revolutionary road starring Jack and Ruth) who was a little crazy but could tell the cruelty of reality in a few words, and was nominated for an Oscar. He starred in the book. Brad, the male protagonist with mental problems in the film, can be said to be more suitable. When I first saw the actor Shannon, I had estimated that most of the roles he played were not normal. I didn't expect that after watching the movie for 10 minutes, I was very sure that my previous assumptions were correct.
David Lynch's films are not seen much, the most impressive is The Elephant Man. With this work as a reference, it is not surprising that the suspenseful style of this film appears. At the beginning of the film, the protagonist Brad was trapped in his house by the police as a suspect in the murder of his own mother, but he claimed that he was holding two hostages in his hands, so he was able to form a confrontation with the police outside the house.
Just kidding, it is only in the United States that the police obediently obeyed the hostage taker's request, did not dare to act rashly, and even delivered him takeaway pizza. If it is in our country, it is estimated that when the suspect appeared on the porch many times, he had already been headshot. And if it happened in the Philippines, then it is estimated that the two hostages will have to ask for their own blessings. The ending will probably be a dead end, or maybe they were killed by the police by mistake.
The story unfolds in this context. The protagonist in The Elepant Man is a person with a deformed appearance and a normal heart, but the protagonist in this film, Brad, is a man with a normal appearance and a deformed heart. From the perspective of the whole film, we have enough reasons to suspect that this psychological deformity came from his mother who lost her husband in the early years. This may also be the cause of the tragedy of mother-killing. When a man in his 30s is still overly cared by his mother, this is often the beginning of a tragedy.
Director Werner Herzog is best known for its documentary full of exotic scenery, so when two of Brad’s friends recalled the process of becoming crazy, we seemed to be in a documentary of Herzog and traveled around the world. : The great rivers and mountains in Peru, the ostrich farms and winter snow scenes in the western United States, Tijuana, Mexico with melodious Spanish music, and even Xinjiang Kashgar Uyghur bazaar (I wonder if Herzog got it when he came to Kashgar to shoot this location Shooting permission, considering the situation in Xinjiang in the past two years and the party’s policies, or should I take a tourist visa and then go there to take pictures?)
It is in the reminiscence scenes that we saw Brad after returning from a trip to Peru. Claiming that he heard the voice of God, did so many things that were incredible to others according to God's instructions, and then stepped from madness to destruction, stabbed his mother to death with a knife, and then the film and the police began to confront each other. scene.
The Greek drama in which Brad participated in the play seems to be the direct cause of this tragedy. Brad may have been too deep in the rehearsal because the plot of the drama is about the Greek king who returned to the country after the Trojan War, but was killed by his own wife, and then the king's son avenged his father and killed him. His own mother. Throughout the film, the lack of father’s love seems to have left Brad in an uneasy situation for a long time, and the mother who cared for him excessively, even if he is unwilling to stay away from his mother in life, and his girlfriend are planning to get married and buy a house. At that time, he only wanted to live next door to his mother, but when he couldn't be separated from the play for a long time and couldn't distinguish between the fictional plot and the real life, a human tragedy was finally caused.
At the end of the film, the protagonist Brad walked out of the house at the call of his girlfriend and told everyone that the hostages he was taking were actually two Flamingo, that is, two flamingos. Brad was arrested immediately. Before being pressed into the police car, he asked the policeman played by William Dafoe to help him, and included two things in the report.
Don’t write flamingos, but ostriches, because his mind is full of ostriches running (Forget about flamingos, I see ostriches).
2. Write in the report what happened to the basketball that was placed on the tree branch. (what happened to my basketball) The
day before, Brad and his girlfriend placed a basketball on a tree branch after returning from Mexico. His girlfriend asked him why he wanted it. In doing so, he said that he hopes to leave this basketball to a certain future player. (I am hoping some future player will find it)
The last shot of the film returns to the tree on a small hill on the side of the San Diego highway. He must have thought it was a performance art of a certain artist. When a boy passed by, he looked east and west, and after confirming that no one had seen it, he took the basketball directly.
The name of the film My Son My Son What Have Ye Done comes from the last sentence that Brad's mother said before she was killed by her son. The Chinese name was translated into "Son, what have you done". In fact, in combination with the plot, it seems more appropriate to translate it as "son, son, what are you doing?"
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