Directed by Dome Karukoski. Reviewed by Paul Sorrell
I always find it irritating when films (mainly English ones) that treat “classic” subjects (often adaptations of famous novels) are shot through with a golden haze of nostalgia and sentimentality, with characters in immaculate period dress, backed by chocolate-box images of rural cottages, stately homes and (in this case) Oxbridge colleges.
While Tolkien does not escape the “golden glow” treatment, the film has enough serious intent to hold our interest and engage our sympathies. A biopic of JRR Tolkien’s early life, it weaves together three strands, each a defining influence on the young writer: his developing intellectual and imaginative powers; his relationship with Edith Bratt, a fellow orphan and his future wife; and, at the heart of the film, the intense loyalty, love and commitment that grew between Tolkien and three of his school friends, a seemingly unbreakable fellowship.
Leaving South Africa after her husband’s death, Mabel Tolkien brings her two young sons out to England, where the family is taken under the wing of a kindly Catholic priest and Ronald (as JRR was known) is sent to King Edward’s School in Birmingham. There he falls in with a group of boys with literary and artistic interests that set them apart from the mainstream. Together they form a club, the Tea Club and Barrovian Society or TCBS, pledging to “change the world through art” — to take a stand against the bourgeois conventions that define their school and wider Edwardian society. This gives the boys a great excuse to indulge in a range of youthful hijinks, to which the film gives full rein.
Tolkien’s progress through prep school and then Oxford University is intercut with premonitory scenes of the horrors of the Western Front where we see Second Lieutenant Tolkien, half-crazed with fear and anxiety, wandering through the trenches in search of his school friend and fellow officer Geoffrey Smith. Along with another member of the TCBS, Rob Gilson, Smith was to die in the war. As the scenes on the Somme reach a climax, we are immersed in a hellish landscape where advancing British troops are slaughtered en masse in a fiery wasteland that merges with the Mordor of Tolkien’s imagination, complete with merciless Black Riders and a phantasmal Sauron.
If we can overlook the frequent fictionalising and romanticising of Tolkien’s story, and the film’s glossy sheen, then it conveys some significant emotional truths about the formative years of one of the 20th century’s most celebrated writers. Recommended with reservations.
Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 239 July 2019: 29