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Rooney and Kate Mara Officially Can’t Save Werner Herzog’s Bizarre Comeback Film | TIFF Review
Werner Herzog returns to narrative filmmaking with *Bucking Fastard*, a surreal drama about sisters Jean and Joan Holbrooke, played by Kate and Rooney Mara. Their extraordinary closeness, shared lover and ensuing scandal lead to a sensational court case, but the film struggles to balance its dark humour, eccentricity and attempts at psychological explanation.
Inspired by the real-life Chaplin twins, the sisters finish each other’s sentences, dress alike and appear almost inseparable. Although the film’s first half finds appeal in their naïve bond and bizarre world, its focus on social exploitation and codependency becomes inconsistent; introducing a social worker to explain their behaviour ultimately weakens the story’s more compelling folktale-like strangeness.
In short
- Herzog’s surreal comeback film centres on intensely codependent sisters.
- The Mara sisters provide the film’s main charm.
- Psychological explanations undermine its strongest eccentricity.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
The film’s refusal to settle into a conventional psychological drama can be seen as a strength: its folktale-like strangeness and dark humour make the sisters’ bond unsettling and memorable. Kate and Rooney Mara’s performances give the story an eccentric appeal that a more explanatory approach might have diminished.
The case against
The film’s shifts between dark humour, social exploitation and psychological explanation can make its ideas feel underdeveloped. The social worker’s arrival spells out behaviour that the earlier, stranger scenes conveyed more compellingly, leaving the drama without a coherent account of the sisters or their world.
Explained simply
Werner Herzog is a German filmmaker known for documentaries and distinctive, often unconventional dramas. Bucking Fastard is his return to narrative filmmaking, with Kate Mara and Rooney Mara playing the Holbrooke sisters, Jean and Joan.
The story draws on the real-life Chaplin twins, whose unusually close relationship attracted public attention. In the film, the sisters share a lover, and the scandal leads to a court case.
The film moves between dark humour, family drama and questions about how the sisters relate to one another. Its story also raises broader questions about how people who seem different are judged and explained by others.
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