Tolkien

I really enjoyed it. Of course a biopic, any biopic, is much more engaging if you want to know about the character portrayed. Maybe I had a bit of an advantage not knowing very much about Tolkien. Just the basic facts that I gathered from some documentary on one of the LOTR bonus discs. I am sure there is some artistic freedom involved and that facts are sacrificed on the altar of drama.
It was interesting to see where the ideas for his stories originated from. I wouldn't have minded some added running time to help adding more depth to certain aspects.
Like everything it is a matter of taste but all things considered one of the better movies I watched this year.

Absolutely amazing movie. I enjoyed it much more than what I was expecting. It was a great surprise. It had great music and I had tears many times. I have no special connection to Tolkien, never read his books. This is just a great movie on its own and it is for everyone regardless of if you know who he is.

I think it does its job as a fairly loose biography. We are shown quite graphically the influence of Tolkien's experiences on his work, which should explain a lot even to those not very familiar with his work.

What a grateful surprise. I loved to know a bit more about the life of one of the best writers ever existed.

Not knowing much about Tolkien’s life, I like experiencing this the way it is done.
The war scenes - oh, so he sees himself as Frodo, with a high impossible task … and his squire, Sam.
Then… the headmaster at first seemed an inspiring source for Gandalf, although really just in the first scene.
The four friends… ah, Marry, Pippin, Sam and again, Frodo?
Edith… is she Galadriel? Or maybe Arwen?
The priest seems to have inspired Bilbo.


Funny, how “Sam” would mention there’s a problem with there not being any women in “Tolkien’s” books 😅 there really barely are any worth mentioning, we all know that.
When they’re running through the hallway at around 25 minutes it looked like they were bumping into Aragorn.
Either way, I get all teary from youthful, deep friendship like that.

When they talk about Wagner, and how it shouldn’t take six hours to tell the story of a magical ring… I giggled.

For some reason, I had been under the impression that Tolkien wrote most of TLOTR imprisoned. However, that was never mentioned, and does not show up anywhere online either. Strange, I was so convinced. Maybe I was thinking of Wilde.

The film was visually pleasing with its beautiful cinematography and costumes, rather a calm and at times moving watch. I am not sure they got all the facts right as it seems to me that Tolkien and Edith were married before he was sent to the front. I liked how their budding relationship was presented, and the scene where they compose a story of the cellar door together was quite memorable, though I am not sure it was based on actual events from Tolkien's life. The film shows the friendship with T.C.B.S. and the other boys are presented as really likeable characters, there is the spirit of companionship and fellowship among others, though Tolkien comes across as the most introspective of them and a bit distanced from their more merry behaviour. The war is presented in an interesting way in that it mixes the realistic depiction of the cruelty and brutality of war with Tolkien's imagination. I only wonder how he survived running through the battlefield with not helmet or weapons to protect him - though it seems that it might have been his fevered dream as Edith told him that he couldn't have seen Geoffrey, who died some time before. The scene when Tolkien discusses the poetry of his late friend with him mum is also quite poignant. I did not know much about the publication of these poems or the fact that Tolkien wrote the foreword to it, so it is definitely something I would like to check out. The final scenes with Tolkien telling his whole family the bare bones of what is to become "The Hobbit" is also a nice touch. The film emphasises not only the T.C.B.S. but the influence of the important women in his life on Tolkien's works. Tolkien's mum Mabel is on the screen for a short time but she shows a very charismatic personality, without her Tolkien wouldn't have been interested in the mythology he loved both as a writer and as a professor. Edith in turn encourages him to write and prompts him to develop his works by asking him creative questions. Without these two women, we would have perhaps never had Middle-Earth at all.

Tolkien es una película correcta, si se toma en cuenta que abarca solo una etapa de la juventud del escritor. Tiene buena dirección, gran fotografía y varios diálogos memorables. No está enfocada en los conocidos trabajos literarios, aunque durante el metraje se sugieren de forma elegante las ideas que Tolkien desarrollaría posteriormente para darle forma a sus historias.

El filme tiene aspectos positivos en la recreación de los escenarios y en la banda sonora compuesta por Thomas Newman, que es potente y variada según el escenario y la intensidad de la escena, hay incluso una canción en Quenya, el idioma inventado por Tolkien.

Tiene un tono clásico y es fácil de recomendar a los que disfrutan el cine de época bien filmado. El reparto también está bien seleccionado, sobre todo en la etapa adulta. Falta algo de metraje para explicar mejor algunas historias personales y ahondar en los conocidos personajes de la Tierra Media.

I'm not a biography reader so I have no idea how much of the movie is accurate. I assume most is not but is a reasonable facsimile of the truth.
I enjoyed this movie - it was interesting to find out a bit more about who Tolkien was, his background, and how he ended up creating his famous works.

I really wanted to enjoy this but it just didn't click for me