(The New York Film Festival (NYFF) ran September 25 through October 12, check out M.J. O’Toole’s review of Bucking Fastard fresh from the fest. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
Werner Herzog has never been one to shy away from the complexities of humanity. In his newest feature, the veteran maverick director raises the question of how far societal outcasts will look to find a place to belong. In his astonishing new drama, Bucking Fastard, sisters Rooney Mara and Kate Mara find the perfect on-screen roles for the two to play against one another that emphasize their acting genius in roles that will be talked about with sheer amazement. As fraternal twin sisters Jean and Joan Holbrooke, the Mara sisters take command of the screen with what may be each actress’ best performance yet.
Set in contemporary Ireland, the American-accented Holbrooke sisters act as one: they live together, dress the same, think the same, speak in unison, and try to do every task together. These traits set them apart in the modern world, even though they don’t understand enough social cues to read a person’s intentions. But Herzog does not judge his two protagonists, framing the film in a way that has the audience see the world through these sisters’ eyes. Loosely based on his encounters with British identical twin sisters Freda and Greta Chaplin, he gives a fable-like quality to these sisters’ journey in finding love and a place to belong in this unpredictable, genre-defying miracle.
The story kicks off when Dublin-based Jean (Kate) and Joan (Rooney) come across Gareth Mulroney (Orlando Bloom), a studly, yet drunk and greasy limousine driver who goads the sisters into a sexual arrangement. It isn’t long, though, until this promiscuous rascal moves on to the next woman, leaving the sisters romantically deprived. These events are told in flashbacks, as Jean and Joan are in court in the present day, where Mulroney is seeking a restraining order against the two. As the two testify, in unison, “We loved him. He was the joy of our lives… Is it a crime to love?”
Their erratic behavior in court doesn’t really help their case, where the titular slip of the tongue is spoken in one of the film’s laugh-out-loud moments. Even as six months pass, the sisters continue on their quest for love while surrounded by suspicious townsfolk and predatory men. But they also come across the kindness of strangers, including a generous old neighbor, Westmoreland (John Kavanagh), who helps them settle into a new apartment where he watches over and protects them, and social worker Timothy (Domhnall Gleeson), who tries to help the sisters navigate everyday life and be more productive by doing tasks separately. But the duo’s yearning for love, however preconceived it might be, likely goes deeper than romantic. The problem isn’t as much finding a man to love them both equally as trying to find a place to belong in the world, especially when they receive prejudice and rejection from the likes of their own parents.
The film takes a bit of a turn midway through that somewhat echoes Herzog’s 1982 epic Fitzcarraldo. While Klaus Kinski’s baron in that film dreams of building an opera house in the Amazon rainforest, the Mara sisters’ twins in Bucking Fastard dream of finding a new place where they can exist in blissful harmony, no matter how far or deep they’re willing to go. In search of a new beginning, the twins leave Dublin for rural Ireland to live with their kindhearted aunt (Marion O’Dwyer), where they stumble upon the countryside’s mythic-like caves, a lovely ode to Herzog’s 2011 documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
With a fox they rescue from mass extermination in tow (like something out of Celtic folklore), they spend the majority of their days chipping away obsessively at the cave walls like miners, trying to carve a path to a place where they belong. If you are familiar enough with Werner Herzog’s films, several of them center on people who don’t fit in with normal society. But a good number of them also capture the glory of nature – from ruins to the Arctic – and what humans project onto it. In this film, Herzog remarkably merges his themes, creating an environment where sisters feel their most liberated, to poignant and rather touching results. The glorious caves are where Jean and Joan are at their most euphoric, at one point dancing through it in wedding gowns like butterflies. They even say at one point, “Everyone should dig a hole through the mountains!”
There have been quite a few films about twins that have had a rather morbid atmosphere, such as David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers and Peter Greenaway’s A Zed & Two Noughts. But in Bucking Fastard, the characters are still eccentric (to say the least), but the tone is never bleak. The film may be dedicated to David Lynch, but it’s not the kind you would call “Lynchian.” Sharing the screen for the first time, Kate Mara and Rooney Mara are absolutely sublime, being perfectly (and literally) in tune with one another. You can tell they’re both having a lot of fun with their roles, which kind of makes their presence more commanding.
In his return to narrative directing in a decade, Werner Herzog fills his movie with plenty of surprises and some phenomenal laughs. He makes the Irish backdrops as prevalent a character as Jean and Joan are, which contributes to the ethereal overtones. Even as reality seeps back in towards the end, you’ll leave still wanting the very best for these lovesick, heavy-hearted sisters. There may be a good amount to process after the first viewing, but it’s worth it to experience the Mara’s scene-stealing performances and Herzog’s exceptional directing in this fairy tale for grownups.
– M.J. O’Toole (@mj_otoole93)
