Did you know that JRR Tolkien passed away on August 2, 1973? This man was a British writer, known worldwide for being the author of the classic novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. After years of delay in the development of the project. The production companies Fox Searchlight and Chernin Entertainment have announced the ‘biopic’ about JRR Tolkien. More specifically on May 10, 2019.
The film about the author of ‘The Lord of the Rings. Chosen by The Times as the sixth most important British writer since the end of the Second World War. It is directed by the Finn Dome Karukoski (‘Tom of Finland’, 2017) and stars Lily Collins (nominated for a Golden Globe in 2017 for ‘The exception to the rule ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’, 2015). Searchlight will also become part of Disney in the coming weeks after the merger of Fox with the mouse company.
Where was Tolkien filmed?
‘Tolkien’, which was shot in Liverpool and Manchester at the end of 2017, focuses on the young years of the writer born in South Africa. His father was a senior official of the Bank of Africa. Raised in England by his father Morgan, a Catholic priest, being orphaned. The film recreates the life of the future writer in the years before the outbreak of the First World War. His student days before enlisting in the United Kingdom Armed Forces. To which he belonged between 1916 and 1920.
At just 16 years old, Tolkien met Edith Mary Bratt (played by Collins), who would later become his wife, at the orphanage. Bratt was three years younger than the writer. So Father Morgan forbade him to even correspond with her until she was 18. In those younger years, Tolkien also found friendship and literary inspiration among his group of school friends. King Edward of Birmingham, with whom he founded a semi-secret society known as the Barrovian Society and Tea Club.
Biographers of the author of ‘ The Hobbit’ believe that the separation from his ‘community’ of friends. It is because of the war that inspired him to write the ‘Lord of the Rings trilogy. Whose first volume responds to the title ‘The fellowship of the ring’.
Tolkien’s early life
Tolkien participated in the Battle of the Somme as a telecommunications engineer. Friendship, the fight against evil, and sacrifice are the central theme of his most famous fantasy novels. As a metaphor for his time on the battlefield. Tolkien officers participated in the infamous Battle of the Somme. Where more than 184,000 British soldiers died —as telecommunication until he contracted ‘trench fever. He was transferred back to England on November 8.
Although from a young age he was interested in poetry—some of his compositions were the basis for building ‘ The Silmarillion’. Between 1920 and 1930 he began to write ‘ The Hobbit ‘ —at first as a series of stories to entertain his children. which he finally published in novel form in 1937. From this year he began to write ‘The Lord of the Rings’, initially as a sequel to ‘The Hobbit. But which ended up being published in three volumes between 1954 and 1955. His son Christopher posthumously published much of his vast literary output set in Middle-earth.
‘Tolkien’ Synopsis
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, born in present-day South Africa in 1892 but raised in England, showed great interest in letters from a young age. In the film, we see how, after his discharge. As a second lieutenant due to illness in the middle of the war. He began to write about something that would end up being part of a gigantic universe. It was not until years later that, as an Anglo-Saxon teacher, he wrote some of the works that would change our literature forever: ‘ The Hobbit ‘, ‘ The Lord of the Rings ‘ and ‘ The Silmarillion ‘.
Having already forgotten Peter Jackson‘s second and not exactly brilliant approach to Middle-earth, but with the first gradually became a generational trilogy. Fox Searchlight brings the good old JRR Tolkien to the big screen again, this time in the form of a biopic that could serve as a warm-up before what Amazon Prime is up to with its gigantic series of ‘ The Lord of the Rings ‘.
