Checked out the new biopic Tolkien. This film tells the story of young J.R.R. Tolkien from a young lad in the idyllic woods of England to his time at Oxford and then a smattering of the hell of the trenches of WWI. Only problem is… not a lot happens… so… Lord of the Rings anyone?
Yeah, apparently not a lot of happens in Tolkien’s life that can survive a biopic. Yes, he did serve in WWI… but the film is only vaguely interested in that reality and more interested in assuring us that, in a fevered state, he imagined Balrogs and Nazgul while lying in bloody pools of water surrounded by allied corpses. But this is just a framing device and maybe ten minutes of the flick. The rest is just focused mainly on his time at university with his three friends who form a kind of fellowship (of the arts). It doesn’t make any real connections between them and the hobbits other than they were four friends hanging out in pubs and talking literature, music, and art. Some of his influences are shown – the Ring Cycle and discussions of Norse Mythology… but they don’t even mention his (real life) desire to create England’s own mythology (which was the inspiration of the books).
All of which could be good… but it just aggressively keeps going on and on without any real drama or story. Yes, this is who Tolkien was – in his latter life, a tweedy Oxford university professor confused by all the hippies in the sixties who discovered his books. A lot probably didn’t actively happen to him (besides, you know, WW1)… and that’s cool in real life, less so in a dramatic retelling of it.
And I even wish it had covered his later years but it kind of ends at him writing the opening lines of The Hobbit. It splashes up some rather tame text about the rest of his life… never mentioning the popularity of the books (or the movies). It genuinely leaves you not sure why this movie exists or why this guy matters (if you already didn’t know about the books).
It’s a dull affair. A rather boring movie. Well enough acted and I’m sure it’s earnest. It’s not a disaster as far as movie’s go. I was into it for quite a while before it all just went nowhere. So if you are super curious, it might be worth watching (at home)… but I wouldn’t recommend it over a Peter Jackson film, for example.
Score: 68