This is not a professional film review, please don't be swayed by the author's layman's point of view.
"Tolkien" tells the story of John Ronald Ruel Tolkien (1892-1973)-to be precise, the story of his first half of his life. Tolkien is a scholar at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. The reason why he is well known to the outside world is that his works such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings have a profound impact on modern popular culture. The reason why we saw this biographical film "Tolkien" is mainly because the film adapted from "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" has attracted widespread attention-among them, "The Lord of the Rings" has achieved outstanding results. "The Hobbit" was also a hit blockbuster in previous years.
In fact, apart from the biography, Tolkien's life is described in many related documentaries. But "Tolkien" is a feature film. The crew invited two young and beautiful actors, Nicholas Holt and Lily Collins, to play Tolkien and his wife respectively.
Many people believe that Tolkien’s first half of his life is indeed dramatic, but there are not many stories to tell when he becomes a professor at Oxford University. The screenwriter and director of this film may also hold this view, so the story only talks about Tolkien's return from the battlefield of World War I.
Movie Synopsis
The movie begins in the trenches, when young Tolkien is looking for his friend in the trenches, and a loyal subordinate follows him. The film tells of his previous life experience through continuous flashbacks. The first paragraph mentioned that he was playing happily with his brother in the country, but the family's financial situation was not good. They had to move. With the help of the church, his mother brought them to live in Birmingham. The mother told Tolkien and his younger brother at home about ancient myths, which was hinted as one of the important inspirations for Tolkien in the movie. The second paragraph says that after their mother died of illness, they were adopted by Father Francis and studied at King Edward’s School. Tolkien showed his linguistic talents, and he also met several friends who had a deep influence on him, and they formed TCBS (but the subsequent war would break this small group apart). Then came the encounter between Tolkien and Edith Blatter, and his failure to pass the Oxford University entrance examination and was forced to leave Edith. There is a plot about what Edith wanted to listen to Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" but couldn't, obviously also implying that this was one of Tolkien's inspirations. The movie goes on to say that Tolkien entered Oxford University in the second year and was appreciated and guided by Professor Joseph Wright of Oxford University. He also reunited with Edith at the age of 21, but soon he went to the front. . At the end of the film, it is described that Tolkien seemed to have hallucinations in the trenches and was sent back to the country due to trench fever. A few years later, he became a professor at Oxford University and began to write "The Hobbit." The subtitles appeared, saying that Tolkien later created the greatest fantasy work so many. The whole film ends.
Comment
The visual effects of the entire movie-in terms of biopics-are gorgeous. Many beautiful scenes were shot and produced in the film to show the style of Britain in the early 20th century, and it also tried to restore a part of the scene of the Battle of the Somme. There are some subjective shots of Tolkien on the battlefield, suggesting that this war is also an important inspiration for Tolkien.
Generally, biographical films will be narrated in chronological order. The film uses large flashbacks, but the effect is very unobvious. Tolkien's plot in the trenches is very weak and unattractive. At this time, if the flashback can adopt a very clever transition method, such as the echo of objects and scenes, it can still improve the perception, but in fact it does not. Those flashbacks are actually a comprehensive recollection of his youthful years. If you closely follow his memories of friendship, it will be more in line with the plot of him looking for friends at the moment. But the problem is that the film wants to describe more than just friendship. Its ambition extends to all the things that affect Tolkien. But how can these things be reasonably arranged into such a film of less than two hours? The screenwriter had to arrange roles for Tolkien’s mother, for the priest, for Edith, and for his three friends. Fortunately, the screenwriter planned to only talk about Tolkien as a professor, otherwise he would have to Arrange a role for CS Lewis, maybe even join the publisher. The biggest problem with "Tolkien" is that the narrative has no focus. The story of "Beautiful Mind" focuses on how Nash fights against mental illness, and his wife provides him with spiritual support. This is also the most moving part of the story. It is not difficult to think that many people watch Tolkien to see the connection between his life and his works. In other words, Tolkien's source of inspiration and creative process may be the best choice for screenwriters. If such a story falls into the hands of an excellent screenwriter, it is likely to help people better understand and appreciate works (and movies) such as "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit".
However, "Tolkien" is not a qualified running account. There are many things that are unclear on the plot of the film. The first such problem is the death of his mother. The film did not describe any changes in the mother's body, and suddenly died. In fact, Tolkien's mother died a few days after he fell into a coma due to diabetes when he was 12 years old, but the film's processing method came suddenly and seemed unreasonable. Next, Tolkien became an orphan. As for why he has no relatives to depend on, the film did not explain well. Father Francis Morgan became the guardian of Tolkien and his younger brother, but the relationship between them obviously lacked a basic description, and the younger brother was basically forgotten until the end of the film. The film seems to focus on love, but the separation and reunion of Edith and Tolkien are not described in detail, and they did not even tell the audience about their marriage.
If you think of Tolkien as a writer, you must talk about his creation. The origin of Tolkien’s inspiration, according to the movie, is first the mythology told by his mother (in fact, not only that), then his language talent and ability (but not in-depth), and then the influence of "The Ring of Nibelung" (In addition to not mentioning other works), the last and most important thing seems to be his stimulation during the First World War. For those who don’t know Tolkien, there is no error in this part of the plot, but it just can’t get along with the audience who knows Tolkien. For some reason, since there are so many languages in the film that ordinary viewers cannot understand, there is not the extremely important "Eala Earendel engla beorhtast". When Tolkien said Middle Earth, it seemed that the word was completely coined by him and had nothing to do with the British literary tradition. At the end of the film, Tolkien used the word Fellowship, which actually echoed "The Lord of the Rings". However, this book will not begin to be conceived until after the great success of "The Hobbit", and the response is too far away. Finally we saw that Tolkien was writing a book, just beginning the first sentence of "The Hobbit," but the scene did not match Tolkien's memories. Tolkien said before his death that at that time he was correcting the test paper, but he did not expect to encounter a blank paper, so he was inspired and wrote the sentence In a hole in a ground there lived a Hobbit on the paper, and then he I started to think about what Hobbit is, and then I got my later works. Interestingly, the movie does also say that Tolkien has special feelings about language and names. Tolkien’s chat with his girlfriend reflects this, but when he really started writing, such strong personality details turned out to be Became unimportant.
Another point is confusing: Why don’t the ending subtitles mention Tolkien’s "Lord of the Rings" and other achievements? Why do we have to let the audience understand by reading the subtitles on the screen?
The story has no focus, lack of details, insufficient characterization of the characters, and the protagonist’s creative motivation, history, inspiration, ideas and other topics are not thoroughly studied, making "Tolkien" unable to allow the audience to understand Tolkien's unique charm. "Tolkien" as a writer's biography does not capture the essence of the characters, and high requirements cannot be achieved. It can only barely reach the passing line as an ordinary, time-consuming film.
This result is not difficult to predict, after all, the film is only going to film Tolkien when he was young-so that at least the beautiful actors can be used. Finally, it is not easy to make a good biopic, but it is not commendable to waste good material.
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