The biopic "Tolkien" follows the future "Lord of the Rings" author (Nicholas Hoult) in his formative years that inspired his famous fantasy works.
Like his hobbit heroes Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, J.R.R. Tolkien got by with a lot of help from his friends.
As much as fellowship is central to the influential British writer’s works “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” it’s also a key theme of the upcoming biopic “Tolkien” (in theaters May 10). Directed by Finnish filmmaker Dome Karukoski and starring
Nicholas Hoult (
"The Favourite"), the film chronicles Tolkien's formative younger years, through love and war, which inspired the Middle-earth tales that would entertain and fascinate generations.
In addition to the origins of his fantasy world, the movie “also explores those early years as an artist when you are in a way confronting your imagination,” Karukoski says. “There's often fear with that, also, in how your imagination starts to play with you, especially the mind of a genius like Tolkien.”
Harry Gilby plays Tolkien in his early teenage years as an orphan – who lost his father at 3 and mother at 12 – before Hoult takes over into his late 20s as Tolkien begins to write his famous stories. “When you watch the interviews with him later on in life, he's got that dry British sense of humor and irony, and he's obviously also very deeply loving,” says Hoult.
At the heart of “Tolkien” is the lifelong romance between the author and Edith Bratt (Lily Collins), whom he met at 16 but was kept apart from by his guardian, Father Francis Morgan (Colm Meaney), until he was 21 to focus on his schooling.
“She kept him very honest and took care of him throughout all the difficult strives in his life,” Hoult says of Edith. But she "also pushed him to create what he did create and gave him the foundation to be able to do that.”
The film focuses on Tolkien as a student obsessive about language and an outsider who searched for belonging. He found it with school chums Christopher Wiseman (Tom Glynn-Carney), Geoffrey Bache Smith (Anthony Boyle) and Robert Quilter Gilson (Patrick Gibson), “who are all finding their way in the world,” Hoult says. Their close-knit group, calling themselves the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, “gave (Tolkien) the confidence to chase his dreams” and also followed him into World War I.
The movie takes him to the horrific front lines, including the Battle of Somme, and shows how he was sent back to England after contracting trench fever. Subsequently, he has visions and dreams with “mythical elements,” Hoult says. “There's this darker imagination that he hasn't quite managed to get a grasp on.”
There are those nods to the inspirations behind his Middle-earth tomes throughout “Tolkien” – Edith herself was a spark for Tolkien's elven characters Luthien and Arwen. But at the same time, “you don't want to beat an audience over the head with it, if possible,” Hoult says.
Hoult, 29, became a Tolkien aficionado when directors Chris and Paul Weitz gave him a copy of “The Hobbit” on the set of 2002’s “About a Boy.” Now after playing the author, Hoult finds it “remarkable” to “see the foundations of where it came from and the hardship that he was up against, and how he switched that into something incredible that's influenced so many people's lives.”
Karukoski has also long been a fan and is now reading “The Hobbit” to his 4½-year-old son, Oliver. With “Tolkien,” it was important to the filmmaker to tell all of his subject’s stories “because there's not one narrative in his life that would have built him,” he says. “That's why you have to tell the story of Edith, but you also have to tell the story of the fellowship experience, his own personal experience in Mordor.”
