This Is the Weirdest Movie You’ll See This Year

Courtesy of TIFF Werner Herzog’s cinematic life has been one of audacious exploration.

Famed for both his fiction features ( Aguirre the Wrath of God , Cobra Verde , Rescue Dawn ) and documentaries ( Grizzly Man , Lessons of Darkness , Little Dieter Needs to Fly ), the German auteur has for more than sixty years sought knowledge, epiphanies, mysteries, and an elusive “ecstatic truth” that’s somehow realer than real.

He’s a mad philosopher-adventurer who marches to the beat of his own offbeat drum, eager to discover the secrets of the world and those who inhabit it, and yet as enraptured by the journey as he is the destination.

And with Bucking Fastard , he crafts perhaps the most beguiling—and downright bizarre—film of his career.

Screening at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 14, the 84-year-old Herzog’s bonkers drama is the story of two sisters, Jean and Joan Holbrooke—played by real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara—who dress, gesture, emote, and speak in perfect harmony.

They’re mirror images of each other and, in some strange and unfathomable way, also two halves of a whole, and as befitting a venture indebted to the modern master of surrealism, the late David Lynch, no explanation is given for their condition.

Curiously and uncannily, they simply are.

Wearing a series of modest outfits (long-sleeved sweaters and frilly dresses, ankle-length skirts, headscarves, trench coats) that seem to be from a different era—and amplify the sense that they’re out of time—Jean and Joan appear in court at the outset of Bucking Fastard .

The reason for their judicial hearing is Gareth Mulroney (Orlando Bloom), a boozy hunk who enchanted the sisters and enjoyed torrid afternoons with them in the shed adjoining their properties.

Their tryst is laid out through testimony and flashbacks, and though it began woozily for Jean and Joan, it took a nosedive when Gareth announced he was engaged to another woman and earned their wrath, prompting him to petition for a restraining order.

The initial sight and sound of Jean and Joan talking as one is at once odd and disarming, especially when they verbally hesitate or repeat themselves.

Their attempts to take revenge on their beloved Gareth help plant the action in distinctly humorous territory.

Nonetheless, Bucking Fastard is also intensely, confoundingly weird.

An opening sequence that likens Jean and Joan to caged birds gives a hint of Herzog’s interest in (and design for) his peculiar premise.