Two Brothers (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture)

Film composer Stephen Warbeck gained his initial recognition by writing scores in the style of Victorian (Mrs. Brown) and Elizabethan (his Academy Award-winning Shakespeare in Love) England. Subsequent efforts took him to Napoleonic (Quills) and Vichy (Charlotte Gray) France, as well as another World War II effort in Greece (Captain Corelli's Mandolin). Two Brothers finds him in still another period locale, this time French Indochina in the 1920s, and that provides him the impetus to mix his usual warm orchestral colors with some local musical color here and there. (The orchestra is joined by soloists on erhu, gong circle, sheng, and pipa.) But the setting ultimately seems less important than the subject matter, as it usually is with Warbeck, and this may be the most heart-warming story he's yet accompanied, a children's film about twin tiger cubs separated in infancy and following separate adventures before meeting again in a dramatic finale. It's a second animal feature for director Jean-Jacques Annaud, following The Bear (1988), and the focus on the tigers leaves plenty of room for expressive music, all of it basically good-natured, of course. Some trouble is underlined in "Chasing the Truck," while "Havoc," which uses some of those local instruments, is playful. Warbeck's basic theme, which recurs in such cues as "Sangha the Outcast," has an exotic and melancholy flavor, reflecting the animals' separation, but all works out, and "To Freedom," which features banjo, accordion, and the director's whistling, is typical of the satisfying nature of the music as well as the story.