The film begins with a tight close-up of a stopwatch. Time and the Empire wait for no one. But Rudyard Kipling feels in control of both. His pale yellow Rolls Royce races across the English countryside to its goal - and he wins. The broad grin on Kipling’s face tells us this is what he expected - no less. His friend - no less than His Majesty King George V - congratulates him on his success. The end of the ‘run’ was Windsor Castle.

Inter-cut with the exuberant race scenes, we see a slight, bespectacled young man wait side by side with others in the hallway outside a recruitment office. The prospective recruits hand in their yellow forms. The enlistment forms parallel the color of the motor car in a bleak way. The gleaming yellow Rolls races expansively across the emerald countryside beneath a robin’s egg blue sky; but aside from the faded yellow forms held therein, the recruits, officer, and hall blend together in dark, muted greys. It is a stark contrast, and hints at later events. In some ways the film is about the imagination running headlong into reality. But, for now, blind optimism reigns.

The year is 1914, and British writer Rudyard Kipling was at the peak of his career. His most famous books and stories had been printed to worldwide acclaim. He was well regarded as a writer; he had won the Nobel prize for literature in 1907. Despite an early childhood marked with suffering, and almost to his surprise, he had formed a good life and a remarkable career on the strength of his imagination. And of course, it goes without saying, talent had something to do with it as well.

Throughout most of this film Kipling’s self-determination carries over into everything he does. A man who sought balance, as evidenced in his famous poem “If”, he evinced almost an excess of patriotic zeal. One cannot fault him; Kaiser Wilhelm’s troops were already in Belgium and France. England was in danger, and Kipling was among those who warned that war was inevitable. Otherwise a retiring personality, who shunned notoriety and even turned down honors such as the poet laureate of Britain and the knighthood, Kipling spoke stirringly at many recruitment rallies. If England was to defend Herself, patriotic duty and stoicism must replace doubt and fear.

As Kipling's was one of the primary voices in the call to arms, it could hardly be surprising, then, that the writer's only son Jack should seek to enlist. And so we have the beginnings of this film’s tale. We first meet John - Jack to his family - at a naval recruitment office. As his father, an early automobile enthusiast, speaks informally of his hobby with the King in Windsor Castle, Jack tries to read the letters on an eye chart for the officers. Having taken a few eye exams myself I don’t recognise the format of this one. One wonders if it’s any accident the first four letters spell out “HALT”. John Kipling, like his father, was severely myopic — in layman’s terms, “blind as a bat” without his spectacles.