Two Brothers (DVD)

Kumal and Sangha are the two brothers of the title, tiger cubs who are separated when treasure hunter Aidan McRory comes to the turn-of-the-century Cambodian jungle looking for ancient relics to sell. Kumal is sold to a circus, while Sangha becomes part of the king’s menagerie. Fate conspires to bring them together again as both are mistreated and taught to fight. And guess who their opponents will be?

Director Jean-Jacques Annaud ...
...The film is successful in two important aspects; firstly the wildlife photography is of a very high quality. Instead of hanging back as nature documentary cameramen are wont to do (mainly for reasons of safety) the filmmakers and actors have got as close to the animals as possible, which makes it far easier for the audience to form an emotional bond with the two cubs. Secondly, Annaud has managed to craft an emotionally engaging movie, in which one ... more

Kumal and Sangha are the two brothers of the title, tiger cubs who are separated when treasure hunter Aidan McRory comes to the turn-of-the-century Cambodian jungle looking for ancient relics to sell. Kumal is sold to a circus, while Sangha becomes part of the king’s menagerie. Fate conspires to bring them together again as both are mistreated and taught to fight. And guess who their opponents will be?

Director Jean-Jacques Annaud must really like animals. Not content with bringing a bear cub’s struggle to survive to the screen in the imaginatively titled “The Bear”, he’s now turned his attention to big cats. He’s taken a very simple Disney –style concept and with the use of skilful editing and several pairs of tigers has created an entertaining family film that will keep animal loving kids quiet for the full hour-and-three-quarters running time. The film is successful in two important aspects; firstly the wildlife photography is of a very high quality. Instead of hanging back as nature documentary cameramen are wont to do (mainly for reasons of safety) the filmmakers and actors have got as close to the animals as possible, which makes it far easier for the audience to form an emotional bond with the two cubs. Secondly, Annaud has managed to craft an emotionally engaging movie, in which one can identify with the cats rather than the humans, cleverly editing footage into a coherent narrative that gives the tigers human characteristics, without anthropomorphising them too much. He has created a film that deals with themes of loss and identity, family and bereavement with an ecological message to cap it off.

The majority of characters portrayed in the film are such broad stereotypes that it is hard to believe in them. The French are all colonial buffoons, desperately trying to keep hold of their dwindling empire. The Britons are all money-grubbing mercenaries out to turn a profit at any cost. The South-East are duplicitous and motivated purely by money and social standing and are lead by a westernised cissy who couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag.

Guy Pearce appears as adventurer Aidan McRory. The character is a plot device pure and simple. Something or someone needs to trigger the separation of the tiger cubs and he’s it. Pearce has had a variable career to date and though he has shown that he can carry a film, he seems to have chosen to hang around in bit parts. And this is par for the course. The character isn’t sufficiently well-developed to be believable. We don’t see enough of him to establish whether he is a cold-hearted game hunter and tomb raider or a morally conflicted chancer. McRory’s decision to stop hunting animals should be pivotal to the film, but it feels more like an aside when it comes, as does his romance with the local village chief’s daughter.

Jean-Claude Dreyfus puts in a pantomimic turn as Administrator Normandin, which makes it appear that the French lost their colonies through stupidity and a desire for pointless expansion into inhospitable areas. Though his wife is played more realistically by Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, her attraction to McRory is too clumsily illustrated to have resonance. The most emotionally charged performance in the film comes from youngster Freddie Highmore, who plays Raoul Normandin with a great deal more sensitivity and passion than you would credit a child of his age. I got the impression that he really felt for the tiger cub he was acting with. There are only two things that stop him from being a truly sympathetic character though. The first is that he’s playing a spoilt little rich boy and the second is a really bad French accent, the likes of which I haven’t heard since “’Allo, ‘Allo”.

Vincent Scarito and Moussa Maakri play circus performers Zerbino and Saladin. The characters are clearly metaphors for the opposing attitudes towards animals. Where Zerbino is respectful, kind and gentle, Saladin is brutal and abusive, willing to go to any lengths to get the animal to do what he wants and to make as much money from it as possible. Saladin is the villain of the piece and as soon as you see him, you’ll want him to get his just desserts. Thankfully, this being a kids’ film the baddies always get their come-uppance.

Oanh Nguyen puts in an understated performance as His Excellency, the king of the French colony. He comes across as a tragic figure, crushed by the expectations of his overbearing father and his people and also as an unfortunate fool, subject to the greatest pride-killer of all; Murphy’s Law (if anything can go wrong it will). To a certain extent it is a shame that we don’t see more of him because it is a wonderfully subtle performance.

The real stars of the show are Kumal and Sangha, who are composites of several pairs of tigers used to bring the story to life. The director has cleverly juxtaposed footage of natural and learned tiger behaviours to build two distinct characters; one timid, the other brave and fierce. His intelligent use of editing has also enabled him to create humanised patterns of behaviour, so that we can identify with the tigers as individuals and their plight. He uses the editing to his advantage when it comes to progressing the story, including a montage of the tigers that makes them look like the Butch and Sundance of the big cat world. The end result is a pair of hairy heroes that one can empathise with on virtually every level. The moment where the two cats are brought together in an arena had my boyfriend in floods of tears. Now that’s the power of film.

The score is an evocative affair by Steven Warbeck, whose work adds a great deal to the film, underlining the emotional thread of the movie. He manages to add an extra dimension, giving us a covert nudge into the correct emotional sphere during each scene.

This is a great family movie, if you have kids who don’t require superheroes and big explosions to be entertained. However, a word of warning; do not take your children to see this if they were upset by the opening scene of Bambi – tigers do get shot during the film. Similarly, if you object to tigers (or any animal, come to that) being trained to perform, you may have an ethical problem with this particular film. Though the tigers used were raised in captivity, you may feel that they are being degraded by being forced to perform in this film. That being said, there is a note at the end of the film, giving details of how the tiger population has declined over the past century through man’s meddling and if the only way to bring attention to their situation is to film captive tigers in this way, one could argue that it is a price worth paying.
 

...less