Movie Reaction: Tolkien

Formula: Goodbye Christopher Robin / The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Biopics are hard. That's a movie truism that people don't appreciate enough, because, despite the difficulty of pulling them off, studios still produce a lot of them. Which makes sense. I understand the idea that there's this person who did something interesting, so there must be a movie in that. The problem is that there's an inherent Catch 22 to biopics. A normal life doesn't follow a three act structure. If there's a hero's journey in a person's life, it's discrete, with constant asides. If by some miracle the events of someone's life are particularly cinematic, there's an immediate audience distrust of the story. I tend to think back the movie The Walk from a few years ago, about the man who pulled the high wire walk stunt on top of the World Trade Center. That story is perfect for a movie: a caper with an obvious challenge and moment of triumph as well as a charismatic protagonist. That movie bombed though, because it all rang very false. Joseph Gordon Levitt came off like a cartoon despite doing an accurate impression of Philippe Petit, and the story never felt properly motivated. Most people don't have such a neat story though. That's why, for example, all music biopics have the same arc that was thoroughly skewered by Walk Hard. When a life doesn't present an obvious story, a screenwriter must create one.

I went into the recent J.R.R. Tolkien biopic prepared for the standard biopic problem. Tolkien lived an interesting life: he was orphaned quite young, struggled with class issues, fought in WWI, married his childhood sweetheart, and eventually found international acclaim for his writing. Any of us would be lucky to live a life as eventful as his. It's a hard life to fit into a movie though. In another light, this is the story of a man who went to Oxford, where he became a Literature Professor, saw a shorter than average window of service on the front lines in WWI, and married the first woman he fell in love with. It's a little harder to make that relatively privileged life interesting.

The real problem I ran into with Tolkien though was that it tries to juggle too many stories. The movie begins with Tolkien is a child. It establishes his meager origins and how his mother instilled a love of storytelling in him from a young age. The film moves through the death of his mother and the times he and his brother shifted between different orphanages and foster homes before landing in a permanent one that allowed them to go to a prestigious boarding school. By the way, don't worry about the brother. He's around but never really developed. At the school, Tolkien meets three boys who becomes his close group of friends. The movie attempts to differentiate between the three friends, but developing three characters in the space most films dedicate to developing one is difficult. Jump ahead a little time in his schooling, and Tolkien - played by Nicholas Hoult at this point - slowly woos Edith (Lily Collins), a young woman who also lives in his boarding home. Simultaneously, the movie attempts to follow his difficulties at school (again, at freaking Oxford), to deepen his relationship with his group of friends, and to put hurdles between him and Edith. Then comes the war. Oh yeah, the entire movie is framed by Tolkien delirious on the trenches at the Battle of the Somme looking for one of his friends. The elephant in the room, of course, is the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, which the movie has too much fun talking around and hinting at. I'm pretty sure they looked up every word to call a close group of friends and used every single one of them before finally saying "fellowship" at the end.

I saw the movie for the leads. Nicholas Hoult I've always found winsome if not charismatic. Lily Collins I'll see in anything. They have a nice chemistry. There's a scene they have together that's incredible for how many times they say "cellar door". And I wish I could give that more context. I couldn't name another person in the cast. As I mentioned, all of Tolkien's friends kind of bleed together, so when he's mourning the loss of one late in the movie, it's hard to feel invested. However, I'll happily watch a movie about Collins and Hoult being sweet on each other in a post-Victorian English setting.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies is a stylistic influence the movie can't ignore. Part of the reason the movie uses Tolkien's time in the trenches during WWI to frame things is so they can use the horrors of war to unsubtly show the influence that time had on Lord of the Rings. Horses and flamethrowers become ringwraiths and the flames of Mount Doom very easily. This movie cannot be watched on its own. It's too indebted to the movies. It really gets as close as it can to looking like the trilogy without owing Peter Jackson a producer credit.

I'm probably coming off harsher on the movie than I actually am. I think Tolkien is perfectly fine. I have a good understanding of Tolkien's origin story now. I assume some things have been exaggerated or concocted, because that's always the case with biopics. I would've preferred something with a narrower focus. It's well acted though. The production design looks accurate. Some of that no doubt is owed to the fact that England has a lot of really old buildings. I don't imagine this will appeal to any non-fans of Tolkien, nor do I think it was intended to. 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend