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Tolkien (7/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 110 minutes

PG.

This is reputedly the true story of the young J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. He is often called the father of modern fantasy, even though fantasy had been around long before he started writing.

The movie concentrates on Tolkien’s relationship with his three fast friends from school, Robert Gilson (Patrick Gibson as an adult and Albie Marner as a youth), Geoffrey Smith (Anthony Boyle as an adult and Adam Bregman as a youth), and Christopher Wiseman (Tom Glynn-Carney as an adult and Ty Tennant as a youth). Together they formed the Tea Club and Barrovian Society named for their mutual passion for sneakily sipping tea in the school library or at nearby Barrow’s tea room.

Also told is the story of his love affair with Edith Brant (Lily Collins), who became his wife, even though his guardian, Father Francis Morgan (Sir Derek Jacobi), forbad him from seeing her for three years.

More than a story of how he became a great writer, this is a tale of fellowship, and it goes beyond the bounds to add Hollywood touches to it. As an example, Tolkien is shown barging into the WWI Battle of the Somme, in which it is estimated that over a million men were killed, in order to find one of his friends. Alas, this never happened. Although Tolkien was on the continent in the army in WWI, he was sick most of the time. The scenes of him roaming around the battlefield unarmed looking for his friend while everyone else is armed and bombs are going off all around him looks as contrived and silly as it is. It’s pretty amazing that director Dome Karukoski allowed those scenes from the script by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford to actually be filmed. It mightily detracts from the film’s verisimilitude.

There are lots of other scenes that are of dubious authenticity, like one of him drunkenly awakening the faculty by yelling in a square of the faculty quarters in the middle of the night, and one of him taking Edith to a performance of Wagner and not being allowed in due to the way he was dressed.

While the Tolkien family has not seen the film, it issued a statement that it did not "approve of, authorise or participate in the making of" the film.

The pace is ghastly slow, but the acting is very good, it’s sentimental and sensitive, and an interesting take on someone of whom most know very little.