[Zigûr]

I saw it tonight. I wanted to see the new local documentary 2040 but it was sold out (seeing it tomorrow) and my father had been asking me if I wanted to see the bio-pic for weeks so I decided to just bite the bullet.

It was better than I expected, but I found it tepid, unfocused and lacking in atmosphere and dramatic thrust. To me it seemed as if the film didn't know if it wanted to be about his writing, his relationship with Edith, the war, or his friendship with GB Smith, and by trying to be about all of these things to equal degrees it didn't say much about any of them.

I suppose I appreciated that it didn't entirely gloss over his interest in philology and Germanic language, myth and folklore, but I feel as if that's not saying a great deal. My father claims that the wallpaper in his study at the end was William Morris's Strawberry Thief design, which if so is a nice touch (historically accurate or not), as I'm a quite strong proponent of the Morris-Tolkien connection.

Regardless I think anyone interested in this period of the Professor's life would be far better off simply reading John Garth's (in my opinion) excellent Tolkien and the Great War.

Oh, and also I still think that if they really had wanted to make an interesting film about his early life (and budget wasn't a concern) it would be a quasi-experimental film which cut (preferably without explanation) between his wartime experiences and an adaptation of The Fall of Gondolin.