To film his enlightened nature drama Two Brothers, Jean-Jacques Annaud let the tigers run free on the set in Cambodia.
The humans -- the French filmmaker and his cast and crew, including Guy Pearce -- spent almost nine months in cages whenever the real stars of the picture were roaming about in a huge compound surrounded by safety netting. Under a trainer's supervision, the tigers did what tigers do while Annaud observed and cameras rolled. Authentic animal behaviour was captured while a fictional story involving humans was constructed around them.
That elegant fact tells outsiders a lot about how Annaud, who thrilled audiences with The Bear 15 years ago, approached his subject -- with reverence. "You know, I loved it," Annaud tells the Sun in a Los Angeles interview about leaving the animals free and caging the people. "I loved it for giving them a revenge."
But there was nothing casual about the relationships between man and beast. "We worked under very strict rules," Annaud says. "It should never be forgotten that tigers are extremely dangerous animals. They are very seductive. They can charm you. They can be your friends and they can love you -- until the day they love you for being food. We took maximum precautions. We never ever allowed anyone to be in the compound except inside cages."
The film garnered rave reviews and big box office in France and comes to North America as the potential sleeper hit of the summer. Shot in English, it is basic and linear in its storyline and yet so sophisticated in its deeper meanings that adult audiences find themselves as captivated as children.
"It's an extraordinary piece," Pearce tells the Sun. "It's a lovely, simple story. It feels very childlike, in a way. There is a wonderful fable quality. But, like with most fables, there is something very solid at the centre. I think something does resonate on a really mature level."
Set in French Indochina during the early part of the 20th century, the film tells the fictional story of two tiger cub siblings who live hidden in the forest, where their parents occupy a den inside the abandoned temples of Angkor. But humans suddenly intrude. Both cubs are taken into custody and suffer different fates, one in a circus, the other in a dank prison, while pining for a reconciliation. There is a happy ending but it comes with a steep price.
Annaud wrote Two Brothers for "personal pleasure" as a short story. His notebook, tucked away for years at his country home outside of Paris, re-emerged after the filming of Enemy At The Gates, the epic WWII story of the Battle of Stalingrad.
Annaud was exhausted. While he says he enjoyed the experience, "it was a very tough movie with a lot of explosions, dust, death, fire, blood -- I felt like being in the forest again in a climate of peace and I wanted to see the green eyes of the tigers. Really, that was it."
Annaud is acutely interested in all living things, from barn swallows soaring over his backyard to exotic creatures seen on his world travels. But a tiger he respects with a heartfelt spiritualism. He is in awe of its majesty, power and grace.
"You do not do the same film if you do not respect your hero and your star," Annaud says. With that respect, his story about tiger cubs became the basis of a screenplay co-written with Alain Godard. With veteran Canadian producer Jake Eberts driving the Britain-France co-production, and with the backing of Universal in Hollywood and Pathe in France, Two Brothers became a reality.
Pearce plays a secondary role as an antiquities dealer and tiger hunter. "The idea of doing this film where the focus is more on the animals, and not on us, just felt good to me," he says.
Annaud made his debut with the 1977 Oscar-winning Black And White In Color and went on to create a remarkable variety of films -- from Quest For Fire (a Canadian-French film about prehistoric humans) to The Name Of The Rose with Sean Connery, The Lover, Wings Of Courage (in IMAX), Seven Years In Tibet with Brad Pitt and then Enemy At The Gates with Ed Harris and Jude Law.
"Whenever I do a movie," the 60-year-old Annaud says, "I like to entertain, I like to move and I like to teach. I know the teacher in me should be hidden. I know I should not say that (about wanting to teach) because I'm in the entertaining business. Therefore, my first mission, is to make sure that people are entertained, that they have enough to laugh about, to cry about. Yet I'm totally unsatisfied if there is not another level. I can't stand the idea of starting a movie, devoting three years of my life, just for a few minutes of pleasure. So I hope people can see something else."
The something else in Two Brothers is a sense of time and place -- the film touches on the conflicts that arose with French colonialism -- as well as the issues involved in protecting habit, saving tigers and treating the planet with more respect.
"I think most children identify easily with animals for the very reason that our world, full of words, is very difficult to comprehend for a child, while the body language of any animal is very easy," Annaud says. "I think the movie can talk to them at two levels, first as a metaphor: Young tigers, young brothers, are like them. Basically, they have the same problem facing any kind of danger in life, any predators in life, and God knows we have predators in our society.
"Now, on another level, the more I travel, my heart bleeds when I see what we're doing to our planet, to see that all the trees in Cambodia are going to be gone. I suffer for the Cambodians but I suffer for the tiger in the forest and I suffer for myself in a selfish manner. And I hope that ... we can give a little message that people will carry in their hearts back home and they may think twice before cutting a tree that disturbs their view or killing an animal that they don't like.
"Try to be more generous with other creatures that live on this planet. I don't want to sound too ponderous on this but, after all, this is why we're making movies."
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