Film Review - Tolkien (12A)

Tell me a story, in any language you want.

It's nearly two decades since the first Lord of the Rings film exploded onto the cinematic landscape. Finally - inevitably - we have a biopic of the man on whose epic literary works that movie (and all its successors) was based. Having been thrilled in my time by both the written Tolkienian word and its big-screen adaptations, I was curiously unmoved by the prospect of this based-on-fact story; maybe the Hobbit trilogy had been ork overkill. That indifference lasted around ten minutes into Dome Karukoski's film - then I began to feel those deep-rooted Middle-Earth stirrings all over again.

On the Western Front in 1916, the movie's hero is weathering the Battle of the Somme. That conflict becomes a framing device, the action flashing back from Lieutenant Tolkien's desperate search for a missing comrade to his boyhood and teenage years. There's early childhood trauma, which sees young John Ronald Reuel and his younger brother uprooted from their idyllic rural English home and relocated to the industrial sprawl of Birmingham. There he forges both a bond and a secret literary society with three other lads at King Edward's School, plotting to 'change the world through the power of art' while drinking lots of tea. Halcyon times, but equally intoxicating is the company of Edith Bratt, a fellow-lodger at the boarding house where he lives. Through it all his love of languages - real and invented - bubbles up like a wellspring, along with his desire to create myth. That's until reality strikes, in the form of that devastating war...

By any standard Tolkien is a beautiful film, from the pastoral playgrounds of early childhood to Cambridge's stately towers. Even the battle-ruptured fields of France have a dark grandeur - perhaps too pretty for the grime and sludge of the trenches, though it's not inconceivable that Tolkien's exhausted mind would have viewed them as a kind of mystical apocalypse. There's a lot of magic around, in fact, this lad's imagination having been fuelled from boyhood by mystical tales of Saxon legend. The artistic endeavours he shares with his King Edward companions take on an epic quality (at least in the boys' own minds), while his courtship of Edith brims with the delight they share in language and music.

To say that the story is romanticised on every level isn't a criticism. This is, after all, the tale of a unique mind, one driven by a love of folklore and the beauty of the written word. Everything about the film sells that romance, not least the central pairing. Nicholas Hoult, so gleefully callous in The Favourite, is earnest and articulate as Tolkien, while star-in-the-happening Lily Collins illuminates every scene she's in - sparring with him idea for idea. At its most intense their connection achieves something best described as 'magical'. 

 

The comradeship between the schoolmates is affecting in its own way, particularly Tolkien's friendship with the sensitive and poetic Geoffrey Smith (a touching performance by young Belfast actor Anthony Boyle). Add to that some neat supporting turns from the likes of Colm Meaney and Derek Jacobi, that gorgeous cinematography and a typically plaintive score by The Shawshank Redemption's Thomas Newman and you have a cinematic experience that feels like a warm embrace. 

True this film has more for lovers of Tolkien's fiction, steeped as it is in the influences on which he would later draw. It includes a huge recognition element - 'Ahhh, there's where he got that idea'. In addition, however, is much to which the casual viewer can relate and by which they might well be moved. Depth of love and friendship, artistic striving, courage, heartbreak and regret - they're all woven into a screenplay as vivid and varied as an elfin tapestry. It's idealised, certainly. But does it succeed in conveying the inner life of this extraordinary literary icon? Oh yes. As sure as a hobbit lives in a hole in the ground. 

Gut Reaction: Nothing but deep affection for everything on screen. I got teary several times and thought 'Tell her you love her', repeatedly at one point.

Memorable Moment: Literary flirting in the Grand Hotel.

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. Tolkien is an intimate and nuanced study of the writer's formative years and the influences that forged his later work. A treat for fans, and for anyone who enjoy a good love story. It's several of those all at once.