“Tolkien” Isn’t Bad, But Lacks The Magic

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A lot of creators aren’t their creation. J.R.R. Tolkien wasn’t a wizard, as wizards aren’t real. Maybe I’m spoiled by Peter Jackson’s classic “Lord of the Rings” films, or even going back further, Ralph Bashi’s animated “Lord of the Rings” films. I know a lot of J.R.R. Tolkien’s life evolved around World War I. However, this film overdid it. J.R.R. Tolkien literally flashed back to his entire life in the pit of war torn battle. I don’t know what it’s like to be in war, but it takes a while to get to the writing of Lord of the Rings. He talks about it enough as a project he was working on, but it felt kind of in the background of a romance and a tragic life. As much as this is a bio pic, I wanted a bit more about his creative side, to make this film feel  less heavy handed with everything bad about J.R.R. Tolkien’s life.

               Creative people often have tragic lives. There’s something even weirdly tragic about those who write fantasy. They aren’t just writing stories. They are coming up with something insanely detailed and totally made up. It might draw from their real lives, but it’s masked by a totally made up world. J.K. Rowling, author of “Harry Potter” is a well known manic depressive. J.R.R. Tolkien was haunted by war, his childhood and a love he held onto. Some of this works in the film, yet some of it feels kind of oddly thrown in. For example, there’s a scene where he’s in battle and a CGI dragon randomly shows up and starts to fire. Yes, I get they trying to show his inspiration of “Lord of the Rings” through war, but it doesn’t feel quite like it works.

               Tolkien is played by Nicholas Holt, the kid who’s grown up a ton since the 2000s charmer, “About A Boy”, as J.R.R. Tolkien. The film jumps around from Tolkien as a adult who is trying to romance his childhood flame, Edith Bratt (Lilly James), and his childhood, where he is basically hanging out with a group of other tweens at a Catholic boarding school. As a kid (played by Harry Gilby), he joins a gang of other nerds, who love to talk about literature and other intellectual pursuits. While there, he falls for a fellow orphan, Edith (played as a kid by Mimi Keene). The film is a bit jumpy, going back and forth between his childhood and his adulthood and his war time experiences, and yet, I still wanted to know about how this all influenced Lord of The Rings. As I said, J.R.R. Tolkien talks about it, yet we are rarely shown moments of inspiration.

               Tolkien, one of the most important authors of the 20^th century, is given a straight forward bio pic, and in this case, it might of benefitted by being less of one. We are offered glimpses of inspiration like when Tolkien and Lily sneak into the back of a play they couldn’t afford to see and act like a scene which might have been out of “Lord of the Rings”. However, nothing is really given enough weight. We keep going back to him in a fox hole in War World I, and Tolkien also goes on a journey for a childhood friend he wants to believe is alive, Geoffrey Bache (Anthony Boil).

               Then there’s some things the film didn’t talk about nearly enough. We get glimpses of the influence Catholicism had on Tolkien, for better or worse, but not really enough. We also don’t get to see one of the most interesting parts of his later life, his friendship with C.S. Lewis, who wrote the “Narnia” books. I guess I’m nitpicking a bit, but there’s been a ton of books written on Tolkien, who wrote one of the best pieces of fiction ever.

               There’s nothing wrong with the performances, and Nicholas Holt is quite good. I also enjoyed his friendship with a eccentric professor later in the film. When Tolkien and professor Wright (Derek Jacobi) are walking through the woods, I could see a bit of how Lord of the Rings came to be. He was a linguistics professor and the scene of the trees with sun coming through them gave me vibes “Lord of the Rings”.

               Look, I might be unfair trying to make this film less of a bio pic, as so much of Tolkien’s life was influenced by his events to become “Lord of the Rings”. Just doing a straight up bio pic of his life with brief mentions of a fantasy world isn’t enough. I need to know what inspired him more than the horror. I also want to know about the wonder. I remember reading an essay by Tolkien in an old paperback of “Lord of the Rings”, with him moaning that hippies missed the point of his books. I think they probably did, but you can’t ignore what messages Tolkien sent out of hope and good over greed, and a simple bio pic wasn’t enough to convey that.