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Some books should stay books, and some writers should stay writers...
Thursday, August 15th, 2019 07:57 pm.
So I watched the movie "Tolkien" last night, and it brought out in full relief what I find so frustrating about most biopics, and that's how unnecessary so many of them are. Take this one, for example. There really isn't anything extraordinary or unusual about his life. He was an orphan, he fell in love, his guardian said "you must wait til you're an adult". Then he went to war and survived (his friends did not). Then he came home and became a professor, got married, had some kids. Nothing about any of that deserves a whole movie. The only thing that makes it interesting is the fact that decades later Tolkien published some amazing stories that appear to have been influenced by his personal history. But other than a couple of anecdotes he related, there's no way to know exactly what influenced him in what way, or whether its influence was direct, or anything else. Tolkien himself said he detested allegory and tried to avoid it whenever he caught a whiff of it, so claiming that the flamethrowers became dragons, or that his personal batman was the reason he wrote Sam Gamgee, is spurious.
And what's really maddening on that score is the things we DO know were direct influences - like his future wife dancing for him on a picnic, which gave birth to an enormous part of his legendarium in that instant - are treated like little throwaway moments, while the film is busy extrapolating HUGE MEANING out of stuff that's iffy at best and a flat out fabrication at worst. AND the film is shy about naming names or doing any direct attribution, so unless you already know his story, you're left wondering what's so important about, say, the steams and smokes rising above the battlefield that the director feels he has to keep hammering home how ugly it all is. It's just so fucking hamhanded and clueless and CLUMSY, I couldn't figure out why anyone would have thought this film was a good idea.
ARGH
And how are all of you?
.
So I watched the movie "Tolkien" last night, and it brought out in full relief what I find so frustrating about most biopics, and that's how unnecessary so many of them are. Take this one, for example. There really isn't anything extraordinary or unusual about his life. He was an orphan, he fell in love, his guardian said "you must wait til you're an adult". Then he went to war and survived (his friends did not). Then he came home and became a professor, got married, had some kids. Nothing about any of that deserves a whole movie. The only thing that makes it interesting is the fact that decades later Tolkien published some amazing stories that appear to have been influenced by his personal history. But other than a couple of anecdotes he related, there's no way to know exactly what influenced him in what way, or whether its influence was direct, or anything else. Tolkien himself said he detested allegory and tried to avoid it whenever he caught a whiff of it, so claiming that the flamethrowers became dragons, or that his personal batman was the reason he wrote Sam Gamgee, is spurious.
And what's really maddening on that score is the things we DO know were direct influences - like his future wife dancing for him on a picnic, which gave birth to an enormous part of his legendarium in that instant - are treated like little throwaway moments, while the film is busy extrapolating HUGE MEANING out of stuff that's iffy at best and a flat out fabrication at worst. AND the film is shy about naming names or doing any direct attribution, so unless you already know his story, you're left wondering what's so important about, say, the steams and smokes rising above the battlefield that the director feels he has to keep hammering home how ugly it all is. It's just so fucking hamhanded and clueless and CLUMSY, I couldn't figure out why anyone would have thought this film was a good idea.
ARGH
And how are all of you?
.
