Worth A Look
An attempt to meld elements of J.R.R.’s legends with his upbringing, love interest, and academic career. A solid and straightforward biopic, it doesn’t lack in ambition but it’s far too simplistic for anyone looking for depth.
The grand saga of jewels and rings found in J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium is arguably one of the most popular stories of the last century. In attempting to distill the creator’s life and works into a bite-sized chunk, director Dome Karukoski (Tom of Finland) captures the high level biography without any of the footnotes or detail.
Structured around a series of dramatic flashes throughout the First World War, we first encounter a young Tolkien just before his mother’s death and being sent to private school in Birmingham. There he forms firm friendships with the boys who would become the T.C.B.S. (Tea Club and Barrovian Society), meets the love of his life Edith Barrow (Lily Collins). As Tolkien becomes a young man (Nicholas Hoult), he must choose between his academia and his love life.
Biopics are known for messing with timelines and compressing facts to suit modern storytelling, and TOLKIEN is no exception. David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford’s screenplay constantly foreshadows the myths Tolkien would become famous for with heavy-handed references to bonds of friendship, war, and duty. While there is nothing necessarily inaccurate in the content, every moment is so layered with symbolism as to make it sometimes feel like a work of fiction.
So, as a straight-up biopic, Karukoski achieves a capable abstract of a life. All the fragments are there: tragic past, literary passion, great love, friendship, and the generational impact of war. One just can’t help feel that it would have benefitted from a few different slithers, such as Tolkien’s time with the Inklings and meeting C.S. Lewis.
Hoult is charming and humble in the lead. Collins doesn’t have a massive amount to do but engagingly brings chemistry to the Ronald/Edith relationship. Colm Meaney and the criminally underused Derek Jacobi serve as the two mentors and father figures in the film, along with being pillars of Tolkien’s twin passions of religion and language.
Where TOLKIEN sets itself apart from most biopics is during the brief cutaways to war, where the looming threat and Tolkien’s future are foreshadowed by wraith-like mists, or fire-breathing dragons that morph into German flamethrowers. This angle would have been a more interesting take if it had been sustained throughout the film, but it only serves to highlight how by-the-numbers the rest of the relationships are drawn.
The famously protective Tolkien Estate has issued a statement saying that they don’t endorse this film, and it’s easy to see why. Where a coda tells us about the elven tale Edith and Ronald’s grave is marked with, their love story on screen doesn’t even come close to showing us how it inspired Beren and Lúthien. As the film coyly finishes with a pipe and a reference to a famous creation, you can almost hear Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings score surreally floating in the periphery. At least this saga didn’t take nine hours to tell.
2019 | US | DIR: Dome Karukoski | WRITER: David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford | CAST: Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins, Colm Meaney, Derek Jacobi | DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 111 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 5 June 2019 (AUS)
