Tolkien (4 Stars)

This is a film about the early life of the author John Ronald Reuel Tolkien from 1902 to 1916, with a short epilogue that takes place "many years later".

After being home-schooled by his widowed mother in his early years, he went to King Edwards School in Birmingham. This was an elite school, visited by the sons of the richest people in Birmingham. Tolkien didn't fit in as a boy from a poor family, but he made an immediate impression by reciting Chaucer texts by heart. He made friends with three other boys and formed a group called the TCBS, the Tea Club and Barrovian Society. They vowed to remain friends for as long as they lived, even though their university paths separated them. Two of them went to Oxford, the other two only went to Cambridge.

After his mother's death in 1904 Tolkien and his younger brother were put in a boarding house in Edgbaston. That's where he met Edith Bratt, another orphan, who later became his wife. A major part of the film has to do with his experiences in the Great War, as it was then called. He spent less than a year in the war before he was sent home with fever, but it affected him for the rest of his life.

I've known Nicholas Hoult for a few years, mainly for his roles in "Mad Max: Fury Road" and the X-Men films, but I never realised until today what a good actor he is. He plays a perfect young gentleman, the sort of man who lived in England at the beginning of the 20th Century. This sort of person no longer exists, so it's astounding that he can play the part so perfectly.

Throughout the film I couldn't help imagining myself in Tolkien's place. If I'd been born in the 19th Century, before computers were invented, I would probably have followed a similar path to Tolkien. When I was 18, language was my second interest, after computers, so I would probably have become a professor of linguistics, rather than following a real career. I'm an academic, not a practical person, even though I spent most of my adult life programming microcomputers for the automobile industry. Now that I'm older I look back on my life and regret some of the career choices I made. I lie in bed at night and ask myself What If.

Some of my friends have called this film dull. I know what they mean, but I disagree. The portrayal of academia, at grammar school or university level, is dull to many, but to me it's fascinating. The parts of the film that I didn't enjoy were the portrayal of war. War is ugly, and the First World War was probably the most horrific war ever for the soldiers on the battlefield. I'm fortunate that I could live in the interlude of peace between the Second and Third World Wars. J.R.R. Tolkien wasn't so fortunate. Two of his friends from the TCBS died in battle. What a waste of brilliant young men!