It’s hard enough to keep on top of the Oscar race, but any serious film fan who is a Werner Herzog completist, has been especially busy this season.  My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, the latest Herzog-directed work, comes less than a month after the delirious unrecognizable sequel/remake Bad Lieutenant – Port of Call: New Orleans , Further immersion into American crime and investigation, this film focuses on one murder case at the crime scene.  The investigation here is no mystery, rather we seek to understand the murderer’s reasons.  In this way, the how-did-this-happen narrative style recalls Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, but with a look that is considerably more DIY; it seems like it was made to play on late-night cable.

Herzog’s double shot in 2009 seem like films he should have or–had his career taken a more well-worn path–would have made as an entry into the American cinema 20-30 years ago after his early masterworks such as Aguirre, Wrath of God.  Both these films brought to my mind Abel Ferrara (Bad Lt. is of course a re-working of a Ferrara film) in that they seem to tip-toe on the fence between the grindhouse and the arthouse.  Bad Lt. was a fun throwaway, but My Son aims to make more serious statements.  Unfortunately the effort is often ham-fisted.  Even things that would be typically, wonderfully Herzogian—the ostrich farm shots come to mind—feel forced here.  Werner Herzog is a filmmaker who is always willing to take it over the edge, but his work has rarely been so strained.