Review: THE LAST STATION

The turbulent marriage between Leo Tolstoy and his wife Sofya has been turned into an actor’s showcase in THE LAST STATION. Outstanding, Oscar-nominated performances by Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer lift this stagy period piece about the end of the famed Russian author’s life above its highbrow trappings and the result is an emotional, crowd-pleasing drama. One does not have to have read ‘War and Peace’ or ‘Anna Karenina’ (I certainly haven’t) to appreciate Writer/Director Michael Hoffman’s excellent biopic as it’s not a film about Tolstoy’s inspirations and doesn’t inject trivia from his novels into the screenplay a la SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. Instead, THE LAST STATION focuses on an episode near the end of his life when, as a crusty old idealist, Tolstoy was conflicted between the desires of his sycophantic followers and those of his long-suffering, high-maintenance wife Sofya. The movie is also an intriguing look at an early writer considered a superstar while still living and the price of celebrity in a different era.

Adapted from a book by Jay Parini, THE LAST STATION chronicles Leo Tolstoy’s final months in 1910, when the dying writer (Plummer) was a media celebrity (his property is constantly swarming with paparazzi) and an influential founder of the ‘Tolstoyan Movement’ and Telyatinki, a quasi-religious commune based on, among other things, pacifism and celibacy. Two factions are fighting for Tolstoy’s will: one is a group of Tolstoyans led by his weasely chief disciple, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giammatti); the other consists solely of the writer’s paranoid and melodramatic wife of 50 years, the Countess Sofya (Mirren). Chertkov ‘s plan is to have Tolstoy’s work posthumously revert to the public domain and use it to continue his spiritual movement with Chertkov himself as its new mouthpiece while Sonya simply seeks to keep the copyrights to his writings as financial security for her and their eight children. These events are told through the eyes of Tolystoy’s new young secretary Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), hired by Chertkov to spy on Sofya, a woman he considers a threat to his cause. Valentin initially agrees with Chertkov that the author’s work should be left to the Russian people but, after falling in love with the sexually free-spirited Tolstoyan Masha (Kerry Condon), he sees the Countess in a new, more sympathetic light. As the writer’s health worsens, he comes more under Chertkov’s influence, and Sofya becomes desperate and hysterical, making embarrassing scenes that eventually drive Tolstoy away on a final journey to……the last station.

THE LAST STATION is well-acted by all, but the film’s centerpiece is the dramatic sparring between Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer. Mirren bravely seizes the often-unflattering role of the tightly-wound Sofya, the opposite of her laid-back husband, given to bile-filled tirades, staged fainting spells, and not at all shy about expressing her opinions. Sofya was Tolstoy’s proofreader and literary muse for most of his career and Mirren shows us a woman passionately fighting for what she believes is rightfully hers and if THE LAST STATION wasn’t the specialized arthouse fare it is, Mirren would wipe the floor with her Oscar competition. Though his role isn’t as outwardly flashy as hers, Plummer’s work as the weary Tolstoy is every bit Mirren’s equal and the strength of THE LAST STATION is the way the two actors play off of each other with these larger-than-life performances (though the two have roughly equal screen time, Mirren is Oscar-nominated in the lead while Plummer’s in the supporting category). These are such full-blooded dramatic characters that I don’t know if the device of viewing these historical figures through the filter of an audience surrogate was necessary. James McAvoy is fine, performing a similar function here that he did in THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, but Valentin’s story is far less interesting and when the film focuses on him, I kept wanting it shift back to the Tolstoys. There are long sections of THE LAST STATION devoted to the battle for Tolstoy’s estate so perhaps the filmmakers thought adding a youthful romance as counterpoint to the Tolstoy’s marriage might spice things up for a broader audience. THE LAST STATION, which ends with an inevitable deathbed scene that is intensely moving, shines brightest when Mirren and Plummer are onscreen together, and they make it a great night at the movies.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars