German filmmaker Werner Herzog has premiered his new feature film Bucking Fastard at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, marking his return to full-length fiction cinema after a seven-year break.
The picture has emerged as one of the leading contenders for the Golden Lion, the highest prize awarded at the festival. Real-life sisters Rooney Mara and Kate Mara star as Jean and Joan Holbrook, identical twin sisters bound by a disturbing mystical connection.
In the story, the sisters think and move in absolute synchronization, share the exact same dreams, and speak at the same time in a single voice. Their shared existence takes a dramatic turn when both sisters fall madly in love with the same man, played by Orlando Bloom, who rejects their affection.
Their adoration rapidly turns into intense hatred, prompting the wounded sisters to take the man they call a bucking fastard to court. The title of the film comes from an untranslatable synchronous slip of the tongue uttered by the twins in court when referring to their former love interest. Following the legal proceedings, the sisters travel to a remote location in Ireland and begin digging a tunnel, firmly believing it will lead them to the imaginary Orkney Islands, a mythical paradise where their desire for ideal love can finally be satisfied.
Festival reception and directorial vision
The film created a strong reaction at the Venice International Film Festival, the world's oldest film festival held annually on the Lido island in Venice, Italy. Standing out against a lineup dominated by topical cinema, critics described the project as an eccentric, wild, and poetic journey reminiscent of Herzog's acclaimed narrative works from past decades.
Film critics highlighted the performance of Rooney Mara and Kate Mara as an incredible spectacle. Commentators noted that cinema history has never before seen two established dramatic actresses speak, breathe, and act in complete unison throughout an entire feature film.
Herzog, 84, transformed the sensational story into an absurdist tragicomedy and an existential parable. The director directly compared the narrative to his 1982 masterpiece Fitzcarraldo, in which an obsessive protagonist hauls a steamship over a steep mountain in the Amazon. Both films explore individuals who refuse to accept the obvious limits of reality to pursue an unattainable ideal.
In Bucking Fastard, Herzog examines how subjective human belief can reshape surrounding reality, as well as the harsh and uncomprehending reactions of courts, the press, and the public toward personal mental autonomy. Herzog is one of the most prominent figures of the New German Cinema movement, famed for exploring human obsession, eccentricity, and extreme physical environments in both fiction films and documentaries.
Inspiration from the Chaplin twins
The storyline is based on the real case of Freda and Greta Chaplin, twin sisters from England who made headlines across the media in the 1980s. Born in 1943 in the historic cathedral city of York, the sisters gained international fame as the most identical twins in the world, taking the concept of conjoined twins to an extreme degree.
Beginning around the age of 11, the Chaplin sisters rapidly lost their individual identities and became mirror images of each other. They spoke simultaneously in unison with identical intonation and speed, producing an echo effect rather than taking turns speaking. They walked in a mirrored pattern while holding hands, swinging their outer legs forward together followed by their inner legs.
Herzog recalled that if a photograph of the sisters were folded in half, both sides would match perfectly. The sisters wore identical clothes, kept matching hairstyles, and carried identical handbags. They could not endure even a moment of separation, suffering severe hysteria if teachers or officials attempted to separate them or seat them at different desks in school.
Legal trouble and medical diagnosis
The Chaplin twins became a media sensation in the early 1980s after appearing on the dock at York Magistrates' Court, which handles summary criminal cases in North Yorkshire. The legal dispute arose from their obsessive pursuit of a local truck driver named Ken Iveson. The sisters stalked him across the city, waited outside his house, and cornered him in public. When Iveson tried to turn them away, their devotion turned to rage, leading them to shout at him and strike him with their identical handbags.
During their trial for breaching the peace, the twins defended themselves fiercely in court by shouting their protests strictly in unison. The confused magistrate sentenced the sisters to one month in prison. The unusual incident generated headline coverage from major international news outlets across the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Brazil.
Psychiatrists conducted extensive examinations of the twins. Their treating doctor, Dr. Trevor Turner, concluded that Freda and Greta did not suffer from traditional psychosis or schizophrenia. Instead, the physician identified their condition as a rare form of induced delusional disorder, a shared state known in psychiatry as folie a deux, which was intensified by their twin bond. The sisters created a closed microworld that completely isolated them from the rest of humanity.
The Chaplin sisters were never able to integrate into society, live independently, or form families of their own. Greta Chaplin died in 2007. Following her sister's death, Freda visited the cemetery every day and walked in circles around the grave for hours, wearing down the grass around the headstone while continuing to converse with her missing half. Freda Chaplin passed away in 2020 at the age of 77.
