The Last Station

The Last Station - Film Review
The film "The Last Station" focuses on the last few months of the novelist and writer Leo Tolstoy's family and social life. It stars Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy, Helen Mirren as his wife Sophya, James McAvoy as Tolstoy's new personal secretary Valentin, Kerry Condon as Valentin's charming and aggressive love interest, and Paul Giamatti as the leader of a group of "Tolstoyans" who wish to widely promote Tolstoy's ideals.

The film is set in early 20th century Russia, before the harsh realities of the Russian Revolution occurred in 1917 and thereafter (Tolstoy died in 1910). It was a time in history when Socialism was still an untried idealized conceptual form of government, and Tolstoy in his final years became more "radical" in his political, religious, and social philosophies.

The film raises 2 universal questions: 1) What do you do when the love of your life is in conflict with your highest priority ideals? And how does your treatment or mistreatment of...

A Magnificent Movie Experience
"The Last Station"--oh, what a great movie experience. It has superb acting, a fascinating story, stunning cinematography, and the evocation of a period in history. Leo Tolstoy, Russia's greatest novelist, espoused many ideas and spiritual principles in his later life which formed the Tolstoyan movement. Christopher Plummer is magnificent as Tolstoy in his last days, and Helen Mirren, is, as usual, truly memorable. A battle is going on in the film between Mirren as the Countess wife of Tolstoy versus Paul Giametti, at his nastiest, playing the head of the Tolstoyan movement. He wants the copyrights to the master's works to go to the Russian people, while she wants the rights to go to her and the family.
She hectors her husband not to give in to Giamatti and deny the family the income from his work. It's a titanic struggle among Plummer, Mirren, and Giamatti that forms the basis for the story. The Tolstoys have been married for forty-three years and have had a number of children...

War and Peace
If you've read War and Peace and Anna Karenina or any other works by Tolstoy, the idea of a film about the great Russian author's fascinating latter years as he disavowed his earlier writings for deep religious principles and social reform is an intriguing prospect, but I'm sure there can't be too many others similarly thrilled by the notion.

It is a strange subject to make a film around, there's no denying that, and indeed The Last Station - based around the struggle over the publishing rights of his entire works between Tolstoy's favourite disciple Chertkov (who wants them to be given freely to the people) and the Countess Sofya (who believes they belong to the family and herself who have supported the Count over the years) - isn't the most dramatically thrilling of situations. To add variety to the constant back and forth battles, showdowns and shouting matches between Chertkov and the Countess over the terms of Tolstoy's will, there is a conventional romance thrown in...

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