Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I like Jean-Jaques Annaud. I don’t love everything he’s done, but I think he’s got a strong voice, and I loved THE BEAR. As a result, I’m very curious to get a look at his tiger movie that comes out later this year. Looks like AICN’s own Edgard already did, and here’s his take on things...
Hey Harry… if I am correct I haven’t seen on your website a review of Jean-Jacques Annaud’s TWO BROTHERS yet… This film was released 3 weeks ago in France & Belgium and is having a nice little success. I think it will be released in the US this summer (June 25) – here’s the trailer in case you haven’t seen it.
Before going on with this new film, let me just share with you how I feel about Annaud.I like Jean-Jacques Annaud, he’s not among my top 5 favourite directors, but he has something special… it’s a director for which you can feel the passion. He loves making movies, he loves creating special universe, he loves the diversity of our world… you can senses that in his films. I know in the 90’s he was labelled as the “director of impossible projects”, and you understand why when you look at his filmography…
I discovered Annaud more than 20 years ago with QUEST FOR FIRE – remember that film ? No dialogue, Ron Perlman, naked chicks… well yes, I was quite young when I discovered it and did not focus on the right things, still it’s probably the best film about prehistory ever made…
Then came Annaud’s masterpiece THE NAME OF THE ROSE… a sort of medieval SEVEN… this is in my opinion Annaud’s best film… but also one of Connery’s best role… an amazing thriller (with a very young Christian Slater…. And naked chicks again, I know I was still young back then & still focusing on the wrong things). Today as I can at last focus on the real story, this film seems it did not age at all… I urge you to see it again whenever you can (although in Europe, to my knowledge, there’s no decent DVD edition for it).
Then came THE BEAR (we will talk more about it later on), THE LOVER (naked chick for 2 hours !!), SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET (I liked it better than Scorsese’s KUNDUM, still it was not as good as it could have been) and ENEMY AT THE GATES (uneven film… love the part of the duel between Ed Harris & Jude Law; didn’t like the part involving the love story & jealousy of Joseph Fiennes).
Which brings us to TWO BROTHERS…
The story is simple: two baby brother tigers are separated because of a hunter (Guy Pearce) – one tiger is bought by a circus, the other one is raised with a child at first then put in the private zoo of a sort of “has been” emperor (we are in Indochina, which is Vietnam under French colonisation in the 1930’s – that was my cultural contribution). Faith will bring the two tigers back together when they’re adults…
(and for the record the whole film is shot on digital camera).
First of all, this is clearly a family film - and you can’t talk about TWO BROTHERS without mentioning THE BEAR: it’s the same principles: the story is told from the animal’s point of view, the humans are kept in a supporting role (you will see in the titles that the tigers names appear before Guy Pearce’s name!), humans are doing (very) bad things, some humans however do learn to respect animals, and wild animals can not be tamed… I would not go as far as saying TWO BROTHERS is a remake of THE BEAR with a switch of animal, but the idea & motivation behind is the same. So clearly, if you don’t like THE BEAR, you will not like this one…
Personally I really enjoyed it… again it’s a family film and it’s probably best seen with your son/daughter/nephew… someone young who will comment how cute it is, how mean are humans, how sad it is that one tiger gets killed… in my case I was there with my girlfriend, and it was working well too: I had someone to reassure me!! (it can be cruel at some point, just to make you understand how stupid & mean we are, us humans… I’m saying this with a bit of irony, but I do really think that we are the scum of this planet). The story is quite naïve, but this is not why you are there: you want to see tigers in action, and that’s the amazing part. If like me you believe tigers are the most beautiful animals on earth, then you will love this… If after this film, people don’t contribute more to associations for the preservation of wild life, then I don’t know what will motivate them !
There’re however two differences with THE BEAR… one good, one bad… the bad one first: I remember that THE BEAR could be very intense at some point (particularly in the face-off between this huge bear & the hunter under the waterfall… I remember you could feel how powerful a bear could be and how scared the hunter was); there’s nothing like this here… there’s some confrontations between humans & animals, but it never gets to the point where you feel how intense it can be… I fear that this is partly due to the digital camera… the image is not as good looking as it could be (especially in the scenes with fire).
The good difference: tigers are amazing animals… baby tigers & baby bears are cute, but adult tigers are totally amazing… there’s much more _expression on the “face” of this animal that on Charlize Theron’s face in MONSTER (sorry Charlize)… every time there’s a tiger on screen (that’s 90% of the film) you can’t help but feel the charisma of these animals… shame that there’re not many of them left alive in the nature. Again: shame on us, humans!!
I bet this is a difficult film to sell in the summer full of blockbusters… but I hope families will run to see it because it has a very positive message without being too “Disney” about it (if you know what I mean)… personally I can’t wait to see the making of from this film when the DVD will be released… I read some articles about it and it looks amazing how they could work with all these tigers (which they did respecting the animals… I trust JJ Annaud’s dedication to nature not to use the animals in a bad way just to make a movie).
I’m sure after that you will look at your own cat in a different way !
Nice one, man. Thanks.
"Moriarty" out.
