Tolkien
Original post date: 4 May 2019
Rating: ✭✭✰✰
Being that this is a biopic about a famous fantasy writer, it comes as no surprise that it quickly puts us in mind of at least two other movies. Like 2017’s Goodbye Christopher Robin (about A.A. Milne), it shows us how a British writer may have used the penning of fanciful tales as a sort of therapy to recover from horrific experiences in World War I. Like 1996’s The Whole Wide World (about Robert E. Howard), we get regular visual hints and teases about the fantasy world brewing in the protagonist writer’s subconscious. Unfortunately, authors’ lives can be notoriously tricky to dramatize on screen. The most dramatic period in young Tolkien’s life was his participation in World War I and the Battle of the Somme, so it is not a surprise that the movie puts that front and center as a point from which we keep traveling backward to see his story in flashbacks. One only has to utter the words “World War I British trench warfare” to summon up a whole litany of clichés, which were always going to be hard to avoid. Another is the stalwart friendship of English school chums, which again happens to be a key part of Tolkien’s formation in real life. And of course, we know before we even enter the cinema, that the film will likely end with the great man putting to paper the words “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” If there are any bits that manage to escape biopic orthodoxy, they are the ones illuminating Tolkien’s love of languages and his penchant for inventing his own. In the end, we essentially have one more game of spotting all the parallels and inspirations for the writer’s work. Aren’t he and his three school chums an awful lot like Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin? Hey, the faithful sergeant helping him through the hellish battlefield terrain is named Sam. (He’s played by Craig Roberts, star of Submarine and Red Oaks.) Et cetera. Oh yeah, and inevitably there’s a romance. Nicholas Hoult and Lily Collins make an attractive enough pair, although she seems far too sensible for him. Colm Meaney plays the kindly but strict priest who looks after John Ronald and his brother when they are orphaned. And Derek Jacobi appears all too briefly as the philology professor in whom our hero finds a critically important kindred spirit. Director Dome Karukoski’s previous biopic, Tom of Finland, chronicled the story of a quite different sort of war-veteran artist.
Rating: ✭✭✰✰
Being that this is a biopic about a famous fantasy writer, it comes as no surprise that it quickly puts us in mind of at least two other movies. Like 2017’s Goodbye Christopher Robin (about A.A. Milne), it shows us how a British writer may have used the penning of fanciful tales as a sort of therapy to recover from horrific experiences in World War I. Like 1996’s The Whole Wide World (about Robert E. Howard), we get regular visual hints and teases about the fantasy world brewing in the protagonist writer’s subconscious. Unfortunately, authors’ lives can be notoriously tricky to dramatize on screen. The most dramatic period in young Tolkien’s life was his participation in World War I and the Battle of the Somme, so it is not a surprise that the movie puts that front and center as a point from which we keep traveling backward to see his story in flashbacks. One only has to utter the words “World War I British trench warfare” to summon up a whole litany of clichés, which were always going to be hard to avoid. Another is the stalwart friendship of English school chums, which again happens to be a key part of Tolkien’s formation in real life. And of course, we know before we even enter the cinema, that the film will likely end with the great man putting to paper the words “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” If there are any bits that manage to escape biopic orthodoxy, they are the ones illuminating Tolkien’s love of languages and his penchant for inventing his own. In the end, we essentially have one more game of spotting all the parallels and inspirations for the writer’s work. Aren’t he and his three school chums an awful lot like Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin? Hey, the faithful sergeant helping him through the hellish battlefield terrain is named Sam. (He’s played by Craig Roberts, star of Submarine and Red Oaks.) Et cetera. Oh yeah, and inevitably there’s a romance. Nicholas Hoult and Lily Collins make an attractive enough pair, although she seems far too sensible for him. Colm Meaney plays the kindly but strict priest who looks after John Ronald and his brother when they are orphaned. And Derek Jacobi appears all too briefly as the philology professor in whom our hero finds a critically important kindred spirit. Director Dome Karukoski’s previous biopic, Tom of Finland, chronicled the story of a quite different sort of war-veteran artist.
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