Tolkien (2019) Review!!!

Synopsis – The formative years of the orphaned author J.R.R. Tolkien as he finds friendship, love and artistic inspiration among a group of fellow outcasts at school.

My Take – I think we can all agree that director Peter Jackson‘s adaption of the epic fantasy adventure trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, set quite a high standard for blockbuster film-making. Filled with immense characters, an excellently weaved story lines, astonishing battle sequences, and gorgeous cinematography, upon release, each film was lapped by the audiences and critics all around.

A feat also achieved by the prequel trilogy, The Hobbit, albeit to mixed results. But does the world know the story behind the Middle Earth based stories?

In this sharp biographical effort, director Dome Karukoski takes us through a marvelous journey into the famous British author J.R.R. Tolkien‘s life and mind, in the form of a handsome looking film that screenwriters Stephen Beresford and David Gleeson have managed to deliver, especially for his fans as premonitions of elves and wizards pop up throughout.

Mounted as an emotional journey through the renowned author’s life, tethered by fine performances by Nicholas Hoult and Lily Collins, who exude a charming chemistry, the film manages to be a sympathetic and sensitive portrait of the novelist as a young man, evolving his creative vision.

As is the case with any biopic, there are quite a few liberties taken with the subject’s life in order to make for an entertaining story. If you are more than casually familiar with the author’s life, then the changes might bother you.

As an avid film goer, and lover of biopics, I found a way to ignore these issues a long time ago and simply enjoy the films for their entertainment value. If you want to know where Bilbo Baggins came from, this is a good place to start.

The story follows John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, aka J.R.R. Tolkien, who as a young boy (Harry Gilby) explored meadows and forests with his younger brother, while their widowed mother Mabel (Laura Donnelly) regales them with candlelit tales of mythical dragons and adventures.

However as financial strains stress the family, they move to a smoke-covered industrial Birmingham, where they are quickly orphaned and placed under the care of a benefactor, Mrs. Faulkner (Pam Ferris), through the help of a Catholic priest, Father Morgan (Colm Meaney), their legal guardian.

Upon joining the King Edward’s School, following a quick tussle, he makes friends with a group of privileged yet erudite intellectual kids, Geoffrey Smith (Adam Bregman), Robert Q. Gilson (Albie Marber), and Christopher Wiseman (Ty Tennant), and together form the T.C.B.S (Tea Club and Barrovian Society).

A friendship which follows onto their adult lives as Ronald (Nicholas Hoult), along with Geoffrey (Anthony Boyle) move to Oxford College, while Robert (Patrick Gibson) and Christopher (Tom Glynn-Carney) head to Cambridge University. While knee-deep in studying ancient mythology, when he’s not sketching helmets and monsters, Ronald begins to find his inclination in exploring and creating language, and pursuing Edith (Lily Collins), his love and muse.

When a chance meeting with Prof. Joseph Wright (Derek Jacobi), a philology professor, finally steers Ronald down his zeal, a global conflict intervenes, forcing him and his friends to enlist as soldiers in the Great War, where he finds his literary inspirations.

Life experiences shape the creative process, which is the main theme of director Dome Karukoski’s biopic charting the formative years of J.R.R. Tolkien, who would write one of the most beloved and popular high fantasy series ever written. Here, the film tries hard to elide the author’s experiences as a schoolboy, an Oxford student and a soldier into the larger themes of quests, courage and fellowship that would dominate his later work.

The filmmakers are largely successful at this; their workmanlike approach doesn’t always create a lot of deep resonance, but it’s a satisfying look at the gestation of the creative process. Framed around his experiences at the Battle of the Somme, director Karukoski thrusts the film into a miserable tableau.

On its surface, the film is about all of the bits of the author’s life that influenced his grand fantasy world. There are, of course, the parts obvious from the above, but the film also takes the opportunity to suppose how his trench fever affected him. Walking along the trenches to the front, in search of a lost friend, the young Tolkien’s mental state is bewildered by trauma and trench fever.

The war scenes are realistic, portraying the horror of war with explosions, soldiers crumpling underneath rifle fire, and even being set on fire by shooting flames from the enemy’s flame thrower.

At various moments during his journey, as he looks out over the horrors of the war, he sees visions of spectral mists, dark riders, dragons and a great and towering figure who could only be evil from the Earth’s very bowels. Everywhere around him, he sees malevolent shadows in the mustard gas which form dragon heads while German flamethrowers become fire-breathing beasts.

A brief scene on the battlefield is clearly aping The Dead Marshes from Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers. A casual fan would also pick up on at least a dozen nods to his work, for example, you can’t miss the Eye of Sauron reflected in Tolkien’s pupil on the battlefield.

But the real strength of the film is in the way it develops and explores the key relationships in the author’s life. The romantic thread between Tolkien and Edith plays out with grace and is marked by some excellent scenes. Tolkien’s main dilemma is whether to concentrate on his studies at Oxford or to marry Edith. Father Francis refuses to allow him to do both. The screenplay makes it very clear that Edith’s passion for Wagner’s Ring cycle rubbed off on Tolkien and helped inspire the mythology found in his own novels. Her free-spirited approach to life also influenced him.

One will also appreciate how the thread with Tolkien’s classmates, which clearly foreshadows the core fellowship of the future novels, echoes the spirit of ‘Dead Poets Society’.

Obviously, the film isn’t perfect, especially in the sense of how it used cinematic liberties for various scenes to add on to the dramatics. Also, if you’re not a Tolkien fan, you may find it slow and comparatively uninteresting. If you’re looking for a new take on The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, this is not the film for you. In fact, specific references or quotations from Tolkien’s work are so thin on the ground that I doubt the film had the rights to use them.

However, the performances add a lot of weight to the film. The title role is capably played by Nicholas Hoult who delivers a piercingly evocative performance, and keeps the dryer scenes afloat with his acting chops. Lily Collins is lovely as always, and absolutely shines in her roles.

In supporting roles, Anthony Boyle, Patrick Gibson and Tom Glynn-Carney along with their younger selves, Adam Bregman, Albie Marber, Ty Tennant and Harry Gilby form the beating heart of the film. In smaller roles, Colm Meaney, Pam Ferris, Genevieve O’Reilly, Craig Roberts, Laura Donnelly and Derek Jacobi are also excellent. On the whole, ‘Tolkien’ is a heartfelt and personal biopic which despite a few faults deserves praise for being well-written and well-performed.