It has taken me
some time to come around to getting and watching the 2019 biopic of my favorite
author, J. R. R. Tolkien. I have my sister and her Christmas bounty to thank
for finally being able to order it. I heard much about it when it came out,
both good and bad, and then it just disappeared. But I always knew that I would
have to someday own it and see for myself, just because I am such a Tolkien
fan. And now I do and I have.
My first impression was that it was a
strange patchwork sort of a telling. The movie used Tolkien’s experiences
during World War One as a kind of framing device, opening with him in the
trenches and suffering weird visions of black riders, dark lords, and dragons
as he faces bayonets, gas attacks, and primitive flame-throwers. It flashes
back to his mother and her death, his placement in a boarding house by his
guardian Father Francis, his growing love for his fellow border Edith Bratt,
and the development of a “fellowship” with three of his schoolmates as he
deepens his love of language under the tutelage of Professor Wright. These
patches of storytelling are broken up by more struggles in the No-Man’s-Land of
WWI, where Tolkien is aided by his batsman, “Sam Hodges”, as an obvious
stand-in for the private soldiers Tolkien based Sam Gamgee on.
So far, so good. But why doesn’t it
work? Things happen, but they seem to have no connection to each other. The
elements do not mingle into a satisfying theme. And I can only conclude it is
because the creative team behind the movie (director Dome Karukoski and writers
David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford) do not understand the true significance of
the threads that helped make Tolkien what he was.
I have read enough biographies to
know that Tolkien and his friends were not “outcasts” but a tightly knit
society that followed their own star. I know that his fealty to Father Francis
was finely balanced with his love of Edith, and it was his loyalty to the two
of them that led to his keeping faith with both, returning to Edith the moment
he had promised. I know that he was writing his myths long before he ever set
pen to paper and wrote “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
That is how the movie ends, skipping
from Tolkien leaving the war all the way to him being a professor with four
young children. Suddenly, out of the blue, as if it were the culmination of all
his life experiences so far and not a simple tale that he begins on a whim and
then tells his children (and which becomes the beginning of the unforeseen “The
Lord of the Rings”), he as good as raises his head to the camera and gives us a
significant look.
There are a few original bits and
pieces I found pleasing. The casting of Colm Meaney as Father Francis and Derek
Jacobi as Professor Wright I thought well-done. I groaned with familiarity when
Tolkien corrected the professor’s pronunciation of “Tol-KINE” to “Tol-KEEN”. One
of Tolkien’s friends says of Wagner’s Ring Cycle that it shouldn’t take six
hours to tell a story about a magic ring. But there are far too many missteps
which I can only say are the result of using frog DNA when you are trying to
recreate a tyrannosaur.
It is perhaps noteworthy that “the Tolkien family and the Estate issued a statement before the film's release to make clear that they did not approve of, authorize or participate in the making of this film, and did not endorse it or its content in any way.” Maybe that was just a piece of legal boilerplate. But maybe there were deep personal reasons. As it is, I simply hope that the day will come when a more accurate and artistic work will be produced that will better recount Tolkien’s journey.
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