After almost a decade of making documentaries, Werner Herzog has returned with another narrative feature.
Sisters Jean and Joan Holbrooke (Kate and Rooney Mara) do everything together. Move together, speak together, wear the same clothes, and fall in love with the same man: Gareth Mulroney (Orlando Bloom). After the apparent love of their lives gets married to another woman, the sisters take extreme measures to show their devotion, eventually culminating in an attempt to literally move mountains.
The Maras are quite a sight to behold; they're in perfect sync. Of course, the gimmick drags, but at the same time it's so utterly hypnotizing. The initial charm comes from the first half of the film, in which we see the sisters in court for a restraining order brought against them by Gareth. After their time in court, they go through various schemes to try to win him back. In the wake of that failure, we next see them in the city attempting to adapt to modern life. The pair are terribly naive, being sexualized and objectified by every single man they encounter. In fact, much of this part of the film involves the sisters being infantilized and cornered by pervy creeps desperate to get close to the famous Holbrooke sisters. An emotional foil to their quest for true love, the sisters seem largely unbothered by the attention; rather, their everyday struggles lie in trivial tasks such as being unable to open a sardine can together. We start to see some character development in them here; they begin to separate from each other, no longer functioning as one, and grapple with the attention they suffocated Gareth with, but the next thing we know, we are in the second act, and these previous events have little bearing on the rest of the film.
Herzog has been such an enigma for so long that even a more disappointing output from him still has its charms, but Bucking Fastard is a frustrating film. It promises quirkiness, but the restraint here makes it feel pedestrian. There were some chuckles in the theatre, but conservatively scattered. Not to say that Herzog has lost his touch; there is much about the film that is flamboyant. In particular, the hectic movements of the camera, swinging, pushing, and flying around, contrasted with the restrained and calculated movements of the sisters. There are remarkable moments of visual interest, often found in the mundane moments of conversation, in which the camera seems almost hyperactive.
The thing that I am most struck by is that I simply don't have that much to say about Bucking Fastard; in fact, I find it inhabits a space of pure neutrality. I can see Herzog's fairytale nestled deep inside.
