Two Brothers: A Fable on Film and How It Was Told (Newmarket Pictorial Moviebooks) Book

The lavishly illustrated companion book to the new film by the award-winning director of Quest for Fire, The Bear, and The Name of the Rose—about twin tiger brothers in the jungles of French Indochina in the colonial period, a major family summer movie from Universal Pictures. "This movie is a combination of three of my greatest passions: the animal world; a love of temples and monasteries; and my fascination with the European colonial period. Although it is a fable, Two Brothers also deals with important contemporary issues. "I am very sad to see that the world that we share with many other species is vanishing. My great hope is that Two Brothers will help us understand the pleasure of sharing the world with animals and to encourage their conservation. "Humans are not alone on the earth, they are not the only ones who have feelings and experience adventures. I think it is important for cinema to give the viewpoint of the forgotten 'people.'"—Jean-Jacques Annaud Five months shooting a major feature film in Thailand and Cambodia, amidst the temples of Angkor, with tigers imported from France and the US was an extraordinary, even life-changing experience for the international cast, starring Guy Pearce (Memento, L.A. Confidential), and a crew of more than 400 people. Their leader was the intrepid director/writer/producer Jean-Jacques Annaud who has always been willing to undergo enormous hardship in order to bring the film that he has imagined to the screen, as evidenced by his visionary work on such movies as Quest for Fire, The Name of the Rose, The Bear, and Seven Years in Tibet. In riveting detail and fully illustrated with stills, drawings, historical paintings, and images that inspired and tracked the process, this beautiful book covers the entire moviemaking odyssey, from pre-production, begun more than a year prior to shooting, through the final post-production stages. Included are fascinating sections on the selection and training of the tigers—cubs and full-grown—by world-renowned animal handlers, including Thierry Le Portier, who worked on the movies The Bear and Gladiator. Two Brothers is the story of twin tiger brothers born amidst the temple ruins and exotic jungles who are separated as cubs and taken into captivity, one tiger to become a circus performer, the other a trained killer. Years later, the brothers find themselves reunited, but as forced enemies pitted against each other. Guy Pearce plays an adventurer of English origin, whose tragic intervention into the idyllic lives of the two tiger brothers forever intertwines their fates. 100 color illustrations.Read More