Trying to tell someone's whole life story can be a tricky business, just ask the filmmakers behind Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings author lived a long and full life, but life is complicated, and it'd be practically impossible to fit everything into a two-hour movie. Here are a few of the things the Tolkien movie ignored. J.R.R. Tolkien was still young when he was uprooted from the idyllic, rural landscape that was Sarehole, and in the film, we see his distraught mother telling him they're going to have to move into the dark, industrial smog of Birmingham. Tolkien is inconsolable, and it's no wonder, it's a huge change, after all. But it's never explained why they moved in the first place.
Tolkien was born in South Africa, but neither Tolkien nor his mother could handle the rough climate. Mabel and her children returned to England for a short vacation and, while they were there, Tolkien's father died. The family was left with no way to support themselves, and while they did have extended family in the area, something happened in 1900 that would have lasting consequences: Mabel and her boys converted to Catholicism.
That conversion and her devotion to her new religion completely ostracized Mabel and her children from the rest of the family. It was after that estrangement from their relatives that Mabel and the boys moved to a Birmingham suburb…and found another family in the Catholic Church. Mabel died only four years later, after being diagnosed with diabetes. Tolkien would later write that her death came on the heels of
"...killing herself with labour and trouble to ensure [her children] keeping the faith."
Watch the video for more about Tolkien ignored the true story and here's how!
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Leaving the Shire | 0:17
Forbidden love | 1:23
The trenches | 2:24
To the end | 3:16
War and the Ring | 4:27
The lion and the hobbit | 5:37
Societies | 6:35
Teaching | 7:39
The environmentalist | 8:38
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