Two brothers (film)

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Movie
German title Two brothers
Original title Two Brothers / Deux Frères
Country of production United Kingdom of
France
original language English / French
Publishing year 2004
length 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Jean-Jacques Annaud
script Alain Godard , Jean-Jacques Annaud
production Pathé (Xavier Castano)
music Stephen Warbeck
camera Jean-Marie Dreujou
cut Noëlle Boisson
occupation

Two brothers is a feature film of French director Jean-Jacques Annaud from the year 2004 . After his successful film Der Bär (1988), Annaud turned back to the animal feature film and focuses on two tiger brothers who are separated from each other as children and only find each other again in adulthood. The film was produced by Pathé and TF1 in collaboration with Canal + and was premiered on April 7, 2004 in Belgium , France and French-speaking Switzerland . In Germany and German-speaking Switzerland, Zwei Brüder started in cinemas on September 16, 2004, and in Austria one day later.

action

French Indochina in the 1920s: the two tiger cubs Sangha and Kumal are born and raised by their mother in a weathered temple complex. While Kumal courageously opposes strange animals, the gentler Sangha prefers to run away from danger. When grave robbers around the famous British big game hunter Aidan McRory haunt the place, the two brothers are separated from each other. The tiger mother flees with the more fearful Sangha in her mouth, while the stronger Kumal cannot follow and stays behind. The intervening father is shot by McRory.

McRory finds the abandoned Kumal, whose trust he wins through honey candy. He lovingly takes care of the animal until he is arrested for looting the temple complex. Kumal ends up with the leader of the Cambodian village, who sells the animal to a circus. Several attempts to rescue his mother have failed. In the circus, Kumal is trained hard by the sadistic tamer Zerbino and has to jump through rings of fire to the delight of the audience.

Kumal's gentler brother Sangha remains with his mother in the rainforest. McRory, meanwhile released, organizes tiger hunts for a Khmer prince. These are organized by the French governor Normandin, who wants to win the prince's favor and build a road across the jungle. During a hunting trip, Sangha's mother is injured in the ear by the prince with a rifle cartridge. She takes the opportunity and pretends to be dead, to the surprise of the hunting party to flee into the forest. Sangha remains alone in hiding and is discovered by Raoul, the governor's son. The tiger cub then grows up as a playmate in the boy's home. When the Sangha accidentally injures the mother's tyrannical lap dog, he is handed over to the Khmer prince's underground menagerie as a precaution . There he vegetates in a small cage.

When the prince wants to arrange an exhibition fight between two tigers a year later, the brothers, who have now grown older, meet again. Kumal reacts fearfully while Sangha is ready to fight. However, both animals recognize each other and, to the delight of the party, begin to play with each other. The trainers try to stop this and provoke the tigers to fight, but Kumal and Sangha manage to escape from the arena.

The next time they spend together in the jungle. They frighten travelers, tear up the farmers' cattle to satisfy their hunger and soon become a nuisance for the rural population. McRory is then instructed to kill both tigers. In the event of a deliberately set fire in the undergrowth that is supposed to drive the two animals together, Sangha, with Kumal's help, manages to overcome his fear and escape his captors through a wall of fire. When McRory wants to shoot Sangha anyway, Kumal appears. McRory is forced to lay down his gun and decides never to hunt again.

Kumal and Sangha return to the temple complex where they were separated as children. There they meet their mother again.

History of origin

Filming in Cambodia and Thailand

Annaud's first drafts of the script were written three years before Duell - Enemy at the Gates (2001), during a family vacation on Socotra . With his first animal film, The Bear , the director had to decide whether he should make a production about bears or tigers. The script was written in 1999 together with Annaud's long-time work colleague Alain Godard , with whom he has been working since The Finished For Me (1979) and The Name of the Rose (1986). In preparation, Annaud visited the Ranthambhor Wildlife Reserve in Rajasthan, India, for several weeks . Pre-production started in 2001 in Siem Reap .

The shooting lasted 169 days and took place in Thailand and Cambodia , including at the Angkor Wat temples . Since the facilities were overrun by tourists, and were clean and tidy, the film team shot at temples that were out of the way in the jungle. In order to restore the appearance of the temple at the time of discovery, thousands of plants were replanted by 150 gardeners, while almost all of the interior shots were taken in the studio in. "In the temples it is as warm as in an oven: If we had shot there, our tigers would have slept all day," says director Jean-Jacques Annaud, who filmed mostly digitally (via HD and 35 mm cameras) largely dispensed with the use of trick technology. The film was shot at the temple of Ta Prohm , the river Kbal Spean and in the mountains of Phnom Koulen, the last retreat of the Khmer Rouge , where mine clearance teams had to be called, as well as Phnom Penh , Pook, Kampong Cham , Kratie and Putang ( Mondulkiri ). Over 400 local amateur actors were hired for the shooting. After shooting in the studio in Bangkok , where the Ta Prohm temple was rebuilt, and in the nearby Mueang Boran open-air museum , the film crew traveled to Paris , to the Arpajon Studios. The film was edited in Paris, dubbed and with music in London .

For the production of the film, a kind of sound archive was created with more than 40 different tiger sounds that had been collected over the years. If the respective situation could not actually be turned, the sounds were played back afterwards.

Work with the tigers

In an interview, director Jean-Jacques Annaud stated that he would show a maximum of ten percent of how a circus dressage would have broken a tiger. Several animals were used on the film set itself, a total of 30 tigers, including 18 baby tigers, which were flown to Cambodia with their trainers. The baby tigers were seven to twelve weeks old and mostly came from zoos in France and Thailand. The shooting was supported by the Indian tiger expert Valmik Thapar .

According to Annaud, the film team focused on the animals: “If someone didn't want to, we either stopped or worked with a double. In addition, we were guided entirely by the temperament of the animals. One is more fearful than another, another moves more than the more indolent brother. We were able to use them according to their abilities and, in addition to the scientific advisors, Thierry Le Portier was one of the most experienced animal trainers. ” Le Portier had already worked with Annaud on The Bear and used a combination of voice, sound and hand signals to guide the animals to conduct. The film was shot in a fenced area, with the director, cameraman and crew filming from a cage. The openings for the cameras were only secured with rabbit wire. The human actors were "fitted" in a second shot .

Annaud said the main problem was the scene in which the two tigers were supposed to attack each other: “The reality is: Tigers don't love each other, even if they are siblings. But the first two little tigers that I used for test shots really loved each other. So we had to wait until these two were big enough to play the scene. We knew they would be ready in September. Then we shot this scene in the studio in Paris within ten minutes with five cameras, " says Annaud. His film is a fable : “Every animal is an individual with a personality. It is sometimes disturbing how close we are to animals. The wonderful thing about my work, about films like this one, is that I also find myself, my own peace. "

reception

Sascha Koebner ( film-dienst ) noticed a rather striking drawing of the human figures, in which, with the exception of McRory, no development can be discerned. "In their emotionality, the tigers seem more humane than humans." , Says Koebner. Nevertheless, the film is enjoyable. The film music has a "strong commentary character" and defines the emotional states of the animals. Nevertheless, the humanization of the tigers makes the film "finally a children's film that propagates fair togetherness between humans and animals, family life and compassion" . Harald Peters ( the daily newspaper ) saw something similar . Annaud's human actors would appear “inimitably wooden” , while the tigers played “completely believable” . The story is "fairytale" and Zwei Brüder is "a beautiful adult film for children and a beautiful children's film for adults" .

Evelyn Vogel ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ) praised the “fantastic animal photos”, but criticized a “very thin plot”. The story holds a number of traps and Annaud tumbles into some. Little Raoul is “a child with a sense of mission, without surprises”, who faces “cruel, greedy and stupid stereotypes” as adults. The film is most problematic where “where humans and animals come together” and “ disneylike- styled predators with apparently humanoid thinking and acting use the kitsch factor”. Annaud also denounced the arrogant colonial rule of the French as well as the greed of the indigenous hill tribe, who would allow the culture of the ancient Khmer to be destroyed and looted. The “business conduct” of McRory reminded Vogel vaguely of the figure of the adventurer Perken from André Malraux 's The Royal Road . Matthias Heine ( Die Welt ), on the other hand, criticized that it was “completely stupid” to “get upset about clichés” at Zwei Brüder , since films with animalistic leading actors would only work exclusively through clichés. The art of directing at Annaud consists in "combining these tiger appearances into a development novel in which they get a completely new meaning".

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung attested Annaud that his art consists in "creating a mainstream cinema that does not have to do without commitment, intelligence and wit" . The scenes between the young animals “have a 'documentary' element” , but “the (apparent) interaction between humans and animals” is more interesting . The film designed the human figures “initially as mild caricatures” . The film turns into a burlesque where the animals meet the human world of things, for example when the little tiger ravages the governor's house or the adult tiger brothers encounter a boucherie's delivery van.

Sascha Westphal ( Frankfurter Rundschau ) largely criticized Zwei Brüder and described the film as a “pathetic ruin” . Annaud had "succumbed this time to the temptation to combine the experiences of the two tigers with a rather absurd satire on the conditions in the French colonies" . The fairytale tone does justice to the two tigers, but not to all the other characters in the film. The governor couple remain "mere caricatures" . A certain fascination emanates from the prince, but Annaud fails to “illustrate the drama of power with his fate” . “The researcher Annaud should have disregarded the storyteller in this project. Then Zwei Brüder with its sensational (close) shots would have become one of the most fascinating animal documentaries in recent years, ” said Westphal.

Awards

Film editor Noëlle Boisson and cameraman Jean-Marie Dreujou were nominated for two Césars in 2005. Boisson won the French film award. Also in 2005, Zwei Brüder received the Genesis Award from the Humane Society of the United States in the feature film category.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Company credits in the Internet Movie Database (accessed September 17, 2010)
  2. ↑ Release dates in the Internet Movie Database (accessed on September 17, 2010)
  3. ↑ a b c d e background information at twobrothersmovie.net (accessed on September 17, 2010)
  4. ↑ a b c d C. Egger: Softly beautiful tigers in a mild colonial satire. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. September 16, 2004, p. 45.
  5. ↑ a b c d Evelyn Vogel: Tiger on the Curse. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. September 24, 2004, p. 15.
  6. ↑ a b Rüdiger Suchsland: Animals are like us. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. September 16, 2004, p. 31.
  7. ↑ a b Cord Riechelmann: "A journey into one's own childhood". In: the daily newspaper. September 16, 2004, p. 15.
  8. ↑ Volker Behrens: Muffled, lazy, cuddly: TIGER. In: Hamburger Abendblatt . September 11, 2004, No. 213, p. 3.
  9. ↑ To you and you with Bengal tigers. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. September 16, 2004, p. 5.
  10. ↑ Critique in film-dienst 19/2004 (accessed via Munzinger Online )
  11. ↑ Peters Harald: Discover the cuddly cat. In: the daily newspaper. September 16, 2004, p. 15.
  12. ↑ Matthias Heine: The tigers are totally hungover. In: The world. September 16, 2004, No. 217, p. 29.
  13. ↑ Sascha Westphal : Duel of temperaments. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. September 16, 2004, p. 31.
  14. ↑ Awards in the Internet Movie Database (accessed September 17, 2010)