Content Limitations Leave Tolkien Tedious, Insulting, and Incomplete

“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and weary enough to detect its presence.” -J.R.R. Tolkien

To make a movie about J.R.R. Tolkien without the permission of the Tolkien Estate is a very bad idea. In fact it’s what should have brought the development of this movie to a dead halt. Because without authorization from the Estate, the film cannot legally use the names, places, and subject matter in Tolkiens’ works, which are kind of important in a biopic about the guy who wrote some of the most revered books of the twentieth century. It would essentially be like producing a movie about J.K. Rowling without being able to say anything about the Harry Potter books and not even be allowed to use the word “Hogwarts”.

However, Tolkien, a Fox Searchlight film directed by acclaimed Finnish filmmaker Dome Karukoski, went ahead anyway, and while it manages to avoid dealing specifically with The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or The Silmarillion by confining its plot to Tolkiens’ early life, it’s not the story we want told of one of the greatest writers in English literature.

The film charts the life of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult) from his childhood in the Worcestershire countryside, to his schooling in Birmingham, studies at Oxford, and experience in the First World War. Primarily, the movie chooses two facets of Tolkiens’ life on which to hone the story: his romance with Edith Pratt (Lily Collins), and his friendship with a tight-knit group of school friends, the T.C.B.S. (Tea Club and Barrovian Society), a precursor to the more famous Inklings Club.

Cutting back and forth from his experience in the trenches to his previous life in England, the film is structured in a mostly typical way for movie biopics, which is already largely dull. Adding to the drudgery are a lot of choices that feel obligatory, such as having Tolkien initially not get along with the boys who would soon be his friends, or the dramatic conversation with Edith before leaving for Oxford, or his forming an instant relationship with Joseph Wright (Derek Jacobi) and his genius with languages impressing his class. These are interspersed with moments of CGI abandon to represent Tolkien’s imagination (but never too specific, and on occasion depicting merely conventional medieval imagery unaffiliated with his more transcendent world) and slow-motion edits that hardly serve a purpose beyond condescendingly telling the audience that the theme at hand is important.

The presented biography comes across like mostly a skimmed wikipedia entry. It gets the important facts right of Tolkiens’ imagination and his devotion to Edith, but feels the need to make the young author something of a scoundrel. Added are scenes of him and Edith sneaking into the props department of a Wagner opera (The Ring Cycle -because this film avoids subtlety at all costs), and him drunkenly mocking college professors and Oxford itself at night upon learning of Edith’s engagement. His friendship with Geoffrey Bache Smith (Anthony Boyle) is emphasized for whatever reason; the posthumous publication of Smith’s collection of poetry is treated with significance, but the insistence on Tolkien’s part that its brilliance and importance need to be out in the world rings pretty hyperbolic given how little-known Smith’s work is. Often times the most fascinating aspects of Tolkien’s character, his love of mythology, fairy tales, and folklore, and his obsession with philology are mere window dressing. The plot is more interested in his relationships, it can’t devote enough time to his personality and as such he comes across as a hollow character at times. The most glaring omission in this regard of course is the absence of any reference to his devout Catholicism beyond merely his being raised following the death of his parents by a priest (Colm Meaney). His faith was as big an influence on his work and life as Edith and his scholarly passions, and it’s irresponsible for the studio and screenwriters not to include it.

But what might be the most egregious thing about the film is the way it creates vivid parallels to Tolkiens’ stories, making it look like he put a lot of his personal life into his work. We see in the T.C.B.S. a clear kinship meant to evoke that of the four hobbits in The Lord of the Rings (you’re just waiting for them to use the word “fellowship”). During the war, he envisions Germans with flame-throwers as a dragon (most likely Smaug), enemies in No Mans’ Land as Orcs; and most on the nose, he is protected by a loyal batman called Sam (Craig Roberts). As the aforementioned quote shows, Tolkien detested the idea that his stories were mere allegories to real-world events or experiences. He always fervently denied an intended parallel in his books, believing the subject matter to be more universal. Whether or not you believe there is an allegorical nature to his work, to suggest it as such in a story about his life is an insult to J.R.R. Tolkien’s very memory. The only place something like it is warranted is in the love story, which he did cite as the primary inspiration for his Tale of Beren and Lúthien. But, that being a less popular story, the one significant allusion takes the form of a vague interlude of Edith dancing for him in a grove of flowers. Otherwise it’s apparent as little more than melodrama.

And that’s not what we want from a movie about Tolkien. The development of his world and legendarium, his characters and stories -that’s what we’d rather see. A good Tolkien movie would cover his translation of Beowulf, likely the first fusing of his love of fairy tales and linguistics, would follow his development of Quenya (which the film shows in its infancy in the movies’ only great scene), showcase his time with the Inklings and friendship with C.S. Lewis. A film merely about his formative years doesn’t satisfy, certainly when it’s not allowed to explicitly touch on the work that made him the father of the fantasy genre. It relies on your knowledge of who Tolkien was and how he’s significant without ever being able to show why -the poster depicts a large ring which makes no sense if you were to go in blind. It’s a shame too, because Nicholas Hoult is a great fit for Tolkien, Lily Collins even is a quite satisfactory Edith. This is an author whose legacy deserved much better than to be 2019’s equivalent to last years’ Mary Shelley. That movie at least talked about Frankenstein.

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