It is a curious fact that 2019 had near the of the year a duo of great historic movies, that blew all the other trash out of the waters. Both of them were technically British productions, one was the best movie of the 2010s, period. Robert the Bruce of 2019 which was a spiritual successor to Braveheart, with the Bruce being a much more personal, intimate and beautiful story about the courage and cost of rebellion. It is a great film, one that ought to have gotten more fanfare than the typical mindless superhero fodder of that year.
The other great movie of that year was a movie simply dubbed ‘Tolkien’. It was supposed to be the start to a duology or trilogy. They already had a second movie prepped which would have focused on the friendship between Tolkien and Lewis. The trouble is that by this time, rather than wanting a movie that celebrates a great and heroic man, one who battled against all odds, who loved with all the passion any man has ever loved people preferred to watch Captain America throw his frisbee.
If I rail a little and bitterly so, it is because I was excited for Tolkien, and was intrigued by the film and found it a magnificent celebration of the man.
Tolkien as all know was born in 1892, and was a man who loved rugby, literature, linguistics and above all else Edith Pratt. You see, he was orphaned at an early age, with his very pious, very Catholic and very wise mother committing him to the care of her friend a priest.
In the movie she is shown to be a genial lady, who praises and encourages her sons’ wits all while the priest goes about snarking about with the boys. Comparing the owner of the apartment they’re to live in to a dragon at one point (doing so with aplomb, grace and good humour).
Tolkien is thus shown as a boy, with nary a coin to his name. He is a desperate youth, one without much of a future, without anything really.
But then he meets Edith at 12 or so, and is at once struck by love. It is an interesting fact of history that since the first moment he saw her, it seems that John Ronald was in love, and that the two were inseparable despite their opposite religions.
The movie goes out of its way to put the two together in some scenes, such as when they are at a restaurant and start tossing sugar-cubes onto some old ladies’ hats and get kicked out. The two even go on a date to see the Ring story by Wagner, but Tolkien has not the money to get them inside, and breaks down vowing to not remain poor like that.
It is a touching scene, one where Edith keeps assuring him, ‘it’s alright, John it’s alright,’ and he persists in telling her that no, it is not. He remains stricken and horrified by his own poverty, while she is embarrassed and full of sympathy for how much his poverty has wounded him.
It is a scene that anyone who has ever tasted poverty has been made to deal with, where we must stomach and swallow the bitterness of life. Swallow the fact that we may as well be dead weight in the sea, and be looked on with pity. It is unsettling and humiliating.
Edith in this scene is shown to have extraordinary courage, and strength; standing by her man, sticking by him in his direst most humiliating hour.
Naturally for her courage and strength, she is punished as it so often goes in life. Historically the two were ordered apart, by Tolkien’s guardian the priest who looked on him like a father might. Ordered apart on account of her religion, the two would be together if three years later, when Tolkien turned 21 years old.
Tolkien would (and this part is sadly not in the movie) race off on his own as she was engaged to another man, arrive whisk her off her feet and marry her, taking her back to his family who were suitably shocked and proudly proclaiming her to have been baptised (she was). Unable to object, they would be forced to acquiesce and give their blessings to the match.
Tolkien for his part had another side to his life which was just as important and just as much an influence on his art and life, as Edith though; his friends. The TCBS was The Tea Club, Barrovian Society, a club that Tolkien had founded with his friends (nigh on a dozen or two of them), with the club a large one. Dedicated to art and literature, and the preservation of it and the creation of new myths, legends, poems, art, and all else they were the noblest of clubs.
The tragedy is that in the bloody Somme and violence of World War I, the Occidental world was torn asunder. The ‘flower of Britain’s youth’ was ripped apart, and Britain lost much, until Canada’s own forces arrived to conquer the Somme. But for Tolkien this was the greatest tragedy of his life.
A travesty the Somme claimed of his best friends, two lives which were cut down before their time. The two men were brilliant thinkers, and were dear to Tolkien with Tolkien’s letter to Geoffrey in particular a heart-wrenching one, enough to make even angels weep (honestly it is the most heart-breaking letter I’ve ever read).
Tolkien in the movie struggles with trench fever (which he historically did) and struggles to find his best friends, struggling and vomitting and weeping all while he goes into no man’s land. Praying as he goes, as we get a scene of Jesus on the Cross, with the audience knowing it is a done deal; that the ‘blood sacrifice’ to the war has been paid, and that Geoffrey and the other TCBS members have been cut down already.
Only Christopher and John were to live, of the original four founders of the TCBS. Returned to Britain, in terrible condition Tolkien was to be reunited with Edith and his mentor, who at last gave him his blessings. Tolkien was to help compile Geoffrey’s poetry and dedicate himself to the dreams of his friends. And it is in the last scenes that he at last writes down; ‘in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit’.
That said, at the heart of this film is the greatest power-couple of the 20th century, the most loving, passionate and dedicated pair of lovers imaginable.
It must also be mentioned that though the film doesn’t get too much into this part, Tolkien’s original stories were dedicated to Edith. It was for her that he wrote of Earendil, wrote the Fall of Gondolin, all during the War. And it was Edith who collected these initial works and faithfully copied them for him, retracing his literal letters and sentences.
So that the Legendarium was a work begun for her, and to her. Tolkien did so because yes he wished to give England her own mythology, and can be seen weaving together his stories and languages throughout the film but at the start it was for Edith. Somehow, I think Edith and England were interwoven together in some manner, so that one could not in his mind get one without the other.
Seriously look up his letters and story, there is much that the movie could not cover (no matter how excellent it was), and this is one of the most tender, most genuine love-stories in all of history. And it is one worth exploring further.
I loved this film when I saw it; you’re definitely right that it didn’t get the attention it deserved!
So: the man who created the most famous fantasy novels of them all lived an epic life himself...