Several months ago when I saw the trailer for “Tolkien,” a film focusing on the youth of one the 20th century’s most beloved and influential writers, I was intrigued with a hint of trepidation. It promised a poignant and exciting look into the life of a man whose stories of good triumphing over evil, friendship conquering all odds, and hope vanquishing doubt, would so greatly effect millions of people, myself included. But often the sole purpose of a film trailer is to garner an audience with promises that the film itself does not keep. I didn’t trust “Hollywood” to stay true to Tolkien’s true journey (which I, admittedly, have only rudimentary knowledge of, if any).

After seeing the film, I will say that it did take some serious missteps in accurately representing Tolkien’s life; sidestepping any direct mention of his strong Catholic faith which the man himself credited for much of his Middle Earth mythos; and shoehorning in a strange implication, unfounded historically, that perhaps one of his closest male friends was romantically interested in him. Both of these issues are, no doubt, a result of the “Hollywood” touch I had feared.

But I can’t escape the fact that I saw the film twice in two days; and loved it both times.

“Tolkien” prodded at my heart in ways that very few recent movies have been able to do. It portrayed a man who looked to the stars faithfully enough to see behind the veil of the universe; who knew that the clouded darkness of Man’s painful lot was only proof of the light. It made me want to be a better man; which is why I want to address a pervasive misunderstanding of the fantasy genre in all of its mediums. My further comments on “Tolkien” will primarily be concerned with its merits as a standalone story and not as a facsimile of the titular author’s life. I will use a certain reviewer’s comments on the film as a springboard into my tirade, in hopes that my tirade may serve as the reader’s springboard into something worth springing into.

Michael O’Sullivan of The Washington Post writes the following.

“Tolkien” leans heavily on a single point: Imagination served as an escape from what Tolkien’s sickly mother calls the “impecunious circumstances” of his youth; his adolescence as an orphan, under the care of a priest… and, later, the horrors of war.

On its face, the comment can be passed over as an almost cliché sentiment. But therein lies the cynicism of our age; the cynicism I half expected to encounter while the movie was playing but instead was struck with afterward. How could one walk away from the movie I had watched thinking that “imagination served as an escape,” when precisely the opposite was true? In “Tolkien,” to the four friends of the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, Imagination served not as an escape, but an advance.

The members of the T.C.B.S. in “Tolkien” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Very early in the film, Tolkien and his friends sit in a tea shop and raucously discuss the arts (at the behest of some of the other patrons). By the end of the scene, they’ve establish a sort of battle cry that echoes until the final frame. “Helheimr,” the name of a feminine mythical figure that men must reckon with if they dishonorably perish, is yelled, spoken, or whispered throughout the film as an admonition to go further than possible. When it would seem pertinent or expected to yield to the swift current of fate, the mythic utterance serves to push the boys into wilful manhood.

I found “Tolkien” to be refreshingly manly in general. In our current era of tearing down idols (only to replace them with ourselves); in the epoch of Luke Skywalker flippantly tossing his lightsaber over his shoulder, or the Hulk taking selfies and passing out tacos, “Tolkien’s” unabashed presentation of hurricane boyishness translating into a resolute manhood that would traverse the trenches of the Great War to encourage a friend or engage in the potentially more perilous battle of honorably pursuing a woman, was pleasantly surprising.

Perhaps I am characterizing O’Sullivan’s comment too harshly and he meant something completely different than what jumped out to me. But words are the frames of ideas and I simply take issue with his chosen frame. Tolkien was no escapist; neither the film character nor historical figure. Escapism is almost antithetical to the world he inhabited and the universe he created.

People talk about how, through art or entertainment, they can leave behind the troubles of this world and rest in a completely different reality. Again, perhaps an innocent sentiment, but I have grown progressively wary of this experience with or approach to art and believe it to be a dangerous frame. There is, some might argue, a healthy dose of escapism that people must engage in to survive; but this is not the purpose of good art. Good art transports people, not further from their reality, but deeper into it. It anchors the heart to the things felt but unseen; the things that make life worth living.

The Shire, home of the hobbits in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, is a destination that has pulled at many a reader’s desire for simplicity and untouched beauty. Many would jump at the possibility of an extended (permanent?) stay in a cozy hobbit hole, as would I. I might even take up smoking. But is there not an implicit question present in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings : Would you love the shire enough to defend it? To leave it? A hobbit hole is a place of repose from which to emerge into the world; not a mine in which to “delve too greedily and too deep.” The wise wizard Gandalf knew the dangers of passing through the heart of the earth; but when he did, meeting and slaying a fiery beast, not “escaping” it, he returned to his friends with robes white, prepared for battle. When another of Tolkien’s characters, Gollum, buries himself in the caverns of the Misty Mountains and the darkness of his warped psyche, it is not to slay a beast; but become one.

An escapist experience of art reveals more about the posture of the viewer than the intention of the artist. The assumption that goodness, joy, and fantastical wonders are the shadow while darkness, hardship, and misery are the substance is not only unhealthy, but patently untrue. Films like “Tolkien” remind me of this. I hope that the words I say and the art I produce will not only momentarily numb the hearts and minds of my audience, but sharpen their swords for the battle against perhaps the most fiery beast of all: Despair.

Edit (June 3, 2019):

I’ve found since writing this piece that J.R.R. Tolkien actually defended the term “Escapist,” but made a distinction between the Escapist, fleeing a prison, and the Deserter, fleeing a battle. Here is a quotation from his essay “On Fairy Stories.” I believe the terms as I defined them still adhere to the spirit of his thoughts on the matter. Decide for yourself.

“Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using Escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. just so a Party-spokesman might have labeled departure from the misery of the Fuhrer's or any other Reich and even criticism of it as treachery .... Not only do they confound the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter; but they would seem to prefer the acquiescence of the "quisling" to the resistance of the patriot.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien

"Tolkien" and Escapism