A biopic about Tolkien, the man behind the Lord of the Rings

"It's about travel. Trips to put yourself to the test. It's about adventures […] It is about a magic that exceeds all that one could feel ". The biopic trailer on J.R.R Tolkien is sure to stir up the curiosity of many fans of The Lord of the Rings.

The premises of his ideals

Tolkien returns to the youth and learning years of the famous English author.
Finnish director Dome Karukoski's feature film is an American production, based on a script by Irish author David Gleeson and British writer Stephen Beresford, for which the means matched the subject's ambition. Orphaned by the death of his mother shortly after his father's death, JRR Tolkien is welcomed with his brother to a woman of the world responsible for integrating them into the good society, thanks to the father Francis Morgan to whom entrusted them their mother . This is where he meets his future wife, Edith Bratt, older and Protestant.

During his studies, he finds friendship and fraternity within the T.C.B.S. (Tea Club Barovian Society) with whom he spends time in a tea room to discuss their respective artistic aspirations. His friends are the poet Geoffrey Smith, Rob Gilson and Christopher Wiseman, whom we follow throughout the film. Between the atmosphere of the English college, their ideals of courage, solidarity and their passion for art, this is reminiscent of the story of the film The circle of missing poets (1989). This quest that animates them will continue in the works of the writer, perhaps to pay tribute to them, through his solitary heroes who fight the lukewarm.

A biopic against the current

When the First World War breaks out, their bonds that unite the band of friends are threatened. But it is also at this moment that the incredible universe of JRR Tolkien is put more in place, unfolding as the scenes of war lived by the author succeed one another, where one sees drawing these visions unmanly and dangerous beasts for men and their souls.

In the meantime, J.R.R Tolkien has been able to integrate Oxford and begin to deepen his passion for ancient languages, thanks in part to Joseph Wright, a specialist in ancient English. Passionate, intelligent and hard-working, he navigates between his imagination and reality amidst the fairly strict lawns and libraries of the English university and the society around him. Every actor, without exception, admirably supports the story with finesse and accuracy.

Between war flashbacks and the early years of Tolkien's youth, the screenplay runs up to the family founded by the writer. If it wants to be exhaustive like any good classic biopic, the frame guided by its relationship with Edith and his friends gives a more romantic and romantic tone to the story, and especially a somewhat necessary unity because of too much wanting to say.

One discovers there a right and loyal man, devoted to a cause as inner as faithful to his idea of ​​the human community. And if her Catholic faith is very little evoked, we know that it is she too who has completed to guide the writing as much as the political positions of Tolkien. The cry of war of the T.C.B.S., far from a bellicose triviality, still resonates at the exit of the film. And he gives us a furious desire to plunge back into the great work of the writer, to find a little of this ideal that was thought lost.

Tolkien, Dome Karukoski, with Nicolas Hoult, Collins Lily, Anthony Boyle, Tom Glynn-Carney, 112 minutes. In theaters June 19th.

In pictures: these movie stars who are also ardent Catholics