Bucking Fastard

Werner Herzog’s first fiction feature in seven years revisits his ongoing pursuit of “ecstatic truth,” tweaking the true-life tale of Yorkshire identical twins Freda and Greta Chaplin, who made the British tabloids after their obsession over a local man turned criminal. Relocated to Ireland and dedicated to David Lynch, BUCKING FASTARD begins with Jean and Joan Holbrooke’s court trial. But Herzog imbues their story with a comic, fairy-tale sensibility, making the story his own—or, rather, his and the Maras’. Cut from the same cloth and joined at the lip as Jean and Joan, non-identical sisters Kate and Rooney Mara deliver (a) tour de force performance(s), speaking and moving together in complete unison, two individuals becoming one. Their life’s journey is to find a place where they can exist on their own terms, and the sisters eventually self-isolate in the lush Irish countryside and embark on a years-long, Fitzcarraldian impossible dream involving a mountain. BUCKING FASTARD is another expression of Herzog’s predilection for offbeat stories about outsiders with idiosyncratic relations to reality, who live according to their own private logic and are failed by a society that has no place for them. (Mark Peranson)

Werner Herzog (selection): FATA MORGANA (1971), AGUIRRE, DER ZORN GOTTES (1972), JEDER FÜR SICH UND GOTT GEGEN ALLE (1974), HERZ AUS GLAS (1976), STROSZEK (1977), NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT (1979), WOYZECK (1979), FITZCARRALDO (1982), WO DIE GRÜNEN AMEISEN TRÄUMEN (1984), COBRA VERDE (1987), GRIZZLY MAN (2005), ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (2007), BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (2009), CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS (2010), INTO THE INFERNO (2016)