Tolkien Tuesday: Film Review--"Tolkien"
The 2019 film never quite achieves greatness, but strong performances and some well-executed story beats come close to doing its complex subject justice.
Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!
Welcome to Tolkien Tuesdays, where I talk about various things that I love about the lore and writings of Tolkien, whether in a chapter reading or a character study or an essay. I hope you enjoy reading these ruminations as much as I enjoy writing them and, if you have a moment, I’d love it if you’d subscribe to this newsletter. It’s free, but there are paid options, as well, if you’re of a mind to support a struggling writer. Either way, thank you for joining me!
I went into the film Tolkien with rather low expectations. Somehow I’d managed to not see it when it was in theaters back in 2019, mostly due to its less-than-stellar reception and by the fact that I was more interested in seeing adaptations of his works rather than a biopic, per se. However, I’ve always intended to watch it at some point and, as I draw closer to finishing my chapter readings of The Lord of the Rings, I felt it was time to do something a little different for this week’s Tolkien Tuesday, so here we are.
As soon as I settled in to start watching it, I found myself enjoying it far more than I expected. While it’s far too literal at times and is stymied by a screenplay that it’s a little all over the place, it’s a movie that has a lot of heart, and it does at the very least allow us to get a deeper, more emotionally resonant appreciation of Tolkien’s youth, his time at Oxford, and his truly horrifying experiences on the battlefields of World War I. While it may not have been a huge hit with critics, and while it seems to have gone largely underappreciated by the larger world of Tolkien fandom, I still think it’s worthy of some love.
To begin with, there’s Nicholas Hoult, who never fails to impress. There’s a sincerity to his mode of performance that I’ve always appreciated, and his delicate features make you want to reach out and hug him, to protect him. He ably captures the nuances of Tolkien’s personality and, as a whole, he gives us a Tolkien who is a sensitive soul but also one who knows what he wants and will do what he can to attain his dreams, whether that’s pursuing the study of languages with a curmudgeonly professor at Oxford or pursuing a romance with Lily Collins’ Edith Bratt against the disapproval of his priest guardian, Xavier Morgan (Colm Meaney).
Narratively, the film interweaves Tolkien’s harrowing and horrifying experiences in the trenches with more quiet, introspective, and even joyful moments. There’s something particularly poignant, even heartbreaking, about the sight of the boys of the TCBS enjoying tea together and just enjoying being young, given that we in the audience know that far too many of them will lose their lives on the fields of battle. Their friendship is remarkably enduring, even surviving the fact that half of them go to Cambridge and the other to Oxford. Tolkien, obviously, opts for the latter, but he soon finds that he’s not really cut out for the course known as “The Greats.”
Things change dramatically for the better when Tolkien crosses paths with Joseph Wright (a warm and truly delightful Derek Jacobi), who eventually takes the young linguist under his wing once he proves that he will not be put off and that he’s actually a tremendously talented linguist. One of the things that Tolkien rightly emphasizes is its subject’s true adoration of language, particularly Old and Middle English and their related tongues. It’s also just a delight to see Hoult and Jacobi on-screen together, and if there’s anyone alive who can play a warm but slightly crusty Oxford academic, it would be him.
The other important lodestar in Tolkien’s life is Edith, whom he meets when they both end up boarding with the same fusty old lady. There’s an immediate spark between the two of them, one that only matures and grows deeper the older they get. Hoult and Collins have dazzling chemistry together, and I particularly enjoyed the scene in which the two of them have a lengthy discussion about Tolkien’s beloved phrase “cellar door.” It’s a gorgeously executed scene that not only demonstrates the extent to which these two characters really understand one another but also how much language meant to Tolkien throughout his life.
Collins imbues Edith with a steely determination and intelligence that is a match for Tolkien’s, though at first he refuses to see it as such. Given the extent to which Edith tends to fade into the background of most people’s awareness of Tolkien and his life, I found this to be a refreshing change, and I likewise appreciated the moment when she essentially tells him that he has no right to let his jealousy dictate her actions or who she talks to about her love of music. Theirs is clearly a romance that is meant to last through the ages, and it’s impossible not to be moved by those moments in which they truly seem to share a soul, such as when they dance together in the costume room of a music hall or when they share a kiss before he departs for the front.
If there’s one thing that consistently hamstrings this film, it’s its insistence on a literal approach to Tolkien’s inspiration for Middle-earth, with moments on the battlefield where he sees dragons and even shadowy menaces that are clearly meant to be the antecedents for th Nazgûl. There’s no other way to put it other than to say that they are pure cringe, even absurd. I’m certain that the film could have made its point in this regard without relying on such a blatant comparison to what he endures in World War I and what his characters endure while wandering through the wasteland of Mordor (the same goes for naming his ever-loyal batman, Sam). Don’t get me wrong: the scenes on the battlefield are well-executed, conveying the horror and the tragedy of the conflict. I just found myself wishing they didn’t beat us over the head with the symbolism.
Though it’s not fatal, it’s also perplexing that the film doesn’t find a way of showing just how important Tolkien’s Catholicism was in all aspects of his life. His faith was a well-documented cornerstone of his personal and professional existence, and he even went so far as to note that The Lord of the Rings was a thoroughly Catholic work. Other than the presence of his priest guardian, however, there’s no real acknowledgment of the centrality of faith, nor is there really a satisfactory resolution of the issue that Edith isn’t Catholic herself (she converted in real life). If you’re going to make a biopic about one of the 20th century’s most famous Catholic writers, the least you can do is to make a more substantive gesture toward the importance of said faith.
What does shine through, though, is Tolkien’s deep and abiding love of his friends, particularly Geoffrey Bache Smith (Anthony Boyle), with whom he shares a particularly deep affection. The scene in which a tearful Tolkien tries to convince the boy’s mother to publish his poetry after his death in battle is one of the best and most moving in the entire film.
All in all, I found myself liking and enjoying and appreciating this film far more than I thought it would. It is very sincere in its approach to its subject and, even if it never quite manages to really reflect the brilliance of the man himself, it can’t be faulted for trying. When it comes right down to it, it may simply not be possible for any one film to really capture Tolkien in all of his true complexity. Tolkien, at least, takes a good stab at it, and I recommend it to anyone who wants a new perspective on this beloved fantasy authors and his works, which continue to be so influential and popular.