Werner Herzog’s modern Greek tragedy

Werner Herzog and David Lynch make quite a pair. Herzog, the German-born director of such films as “Fitzcarraldo,” “Grizzly Man” and “Rescue Dawn,” is a relentless adventurer and the master of external conflict, of man’s desire to fling himself recklessly toward the void. Lynch, maker of “Eraserhead,” “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Dr.,” explores an inner domain, a dreamscape where nightmare and reality intersect.

So it is somewhat unlikely that Lynch would serve as executive producer on Herzog’s latest film, “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done,” which opens Friday in Los Angeles at the Downtown Independent theater. The last few years have been startlingly productive for the 67-year-old Herzog, including an Academy Award nomination for his documentary on Antarctica, “ Encounters at the End of the World,” bringing him some of the greatest recognition of his career. As it turns out, though Lynch and Herzog are not close, they have known each other for many years.

“It goes back to the time when he made ‘Elephant Man,’ ” Herzog said recently of their relationship, referring to Lynch’s 1980 film. “At that time, I was very close with Mel Brooks; you may not believe that, but I would walk into Mel Brooks’ office even if he had five attorneys sitting around. And I was raving to him about this extraordinary film I had seen, and that was ‘Eraserhead.’

“And I said, ‘Do you have any idea, there is an extraordinary talent there, who is this man, have you ever heard of him?’ And Mel Brooks chuckled and asked if I’d like to meet him. And he walked three doors down from his office, opened the door and said, “This is David Lynch. I’m producing his film ‘The Elephant Man.’ ”

For his part, Lynch, via e-mail, said simply, “I consider Werner as a friend and I very much respect him as a filmmaker. Werner has a unique voice in cinema and does not take no for an answer. He is up to any challenge -- he has no fear.”

Lynch and producer Eric Bassett, managing partner in Lynch’s company Absurda and president of his own Industrial Entertainment, had established a distribution apparatus for content from Lynch’s website and Lynch’s own recent film “Inland Empire.” Wanting to keep the pipeline flowing, they sought out projects they could produce and distribute. When they checked in with Herzog, he presented them with “My Son, My Son,” a script he had co-written some 10 years ago with Herbert Golder.

Starring Michael Shannon with supporting turns by Udo Kier, Chloë Sevigny, Willem Dafoe, Brad Dourif, Grace Zabriskie and Michael Peña, the film tells of a young man who, while performing in a production of an ancient Greek drama, intertwines the play’s story with his reality, resulting in his murder of his own mother.

“My Son, My Son” comes out less than a month after Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.” Where “Bad Lieutenant” had a hysterical, hyperactive sensibility motored by Nicolas Cage’s purposefully ridiculous lead performance, “My Son, My Son” is something else, a film with a tamped-down, unsettlingly somber tone that causes everything to seem a little arch, a little off. Though based on an actual 1979 murder case in San Diego, when UC San Diego graduate student Mark Yavorsky killed his mother with a saber, Herzog has used the factual story as a mere jumping-off point.

Rather than a “Law and Order”-style procedural, Herzog has reshaped the material into a meditative study of personality with a perceptibly dry wit, as Shannon’s troubled character seems to find himself deep within Euripides’ classical play “Orestes.”

“I think one side of it . . . was a strange connection to ancient Greek drama,” Herzog said of his interest in the story. “A tragedy where the son has to kill his own mother and an actor in a stage production of that play . . . adopted his acting role into a real murder.

“And secondly it was the thought of doing a film that would be kind of scary, but it would not be like a regular horror film . . . something that creeps up on you anonymously.”

Though much of the film was shot in and around San Diego near where the real events took place, Herzog also took a skeleton crew to China and Peru to shoot footage that would take up only a few minutes of screen time.

“That wasn’t an option,” producer Bassett said of whether suitable locations could have been found closer to home. “He said, ‘No, no, it’s got to be in the Urubamba River in Peru.’ So I just had to roll with that.”

“It could have been done somewhere on the Colorado River,” explained Herzog, noting that the location in Peru was near where his “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” was shot, “but the Colorado doesn’t have this kind of ecstasy of violence, where you can tell, don’t even think about trying it, don’t go there, you will perish.”

Besides the prolific pace of his filmmaking -- he said he delivered an edit of “My Son, My Son” only five days after principal photography was done -- Herzog has also been directing opera works around the world and recently oversaw publication of “Conquest of the Useless,” his diaries from the production of “Fitzcarraldo.” Though the one-two punch of “Bad Lieutenant” and “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done” may seem unusual, to him his recent surge of activity is just part of the continuum of work he has always undertaken.

“I have made 50 or 60 films by now. I have never stopped,” Herzog said.

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