Werner Herzog Rejects 'Neurodivergence' Label at Venice — SkimNews
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- Werner Herzog, speaking at the Venice Film Festival, rejected the term 'neurodivergence' as 'political correctness which scares me under the table,' arguing it frames his monomaniacal characters as 'clinically aberrant' when they are 'dead centre'
- Bucking Fastard, Herzog's first non-documentary feature in 17 years, stars real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara as twins Jean and Joan Holbrooke who speak in unison, dress alike, commit arson and exact vengeful revenge before embarking on a quixotic tunnel-digging quest to connect a County Sligo cave to the Orkneys
- The film is loosely based on Freda and Greta Chaplin, intensely mutually attached twins from York whom Herzog met in the 1980s and who coined the title's spoonerism during a court hearing
- Herzog, 83, said a large share of his current audience are 15- to 17-year-olds, citing a 2024 Centre Pompidou retrospective in Paris that drew an entirely young crowd — in contrast to a preceding Godard retrospective whose attendees were 'all over 80'
- Herzog started his own Instagram account last year at the behest of his youngest son but still does not own a mobile phone, meaning he has been unable to view other creators' content
- While scouting in Ireland, Herzog turned down an animal dealer who offered to source a baby fox 'only under one condition: you must never ask how we got it,' saying he was unwilling to be party to how the animal was obtained
Why it matters: Herzog's rejection of neurodivergence framing for characters he has spent six decades depicting puts him at odds with how his unusually young audience — the teenagers packing his screenings and the Centre Pompidou retrospective — increasingly interpret those same outsiders, sharpening a generational interpretive gap inside a single filmography just as he returns to fiction for the first time since 2008.
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