The Last Station (***)

Leo Tolstoy was the celebrated 19th-century Russian writer of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. And that is all I knew about him. But it turns out he lived into the 20th century, concentrating his energies on furthering his social philosophy, which is not deeply discussed but seems like an ascetic, Christian take on Marxism. His foremost ally in this was Vladmir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), a deadly earnest man seemingly more dedicated to Tolstoyan ideals than the great man himself. His foremost enemy was his own wife, played by Helen Mirren. Her attitude toward his ideals recalls a line in Mel Brooks’s History of the World Part I. Told that “the peasants are revolting,” Harvey Korman as the French King Louis XIV says, “You said it. They stink on ice.” But her real source of ire seems to be Tolstoy’s plan to rewrite his will to waive future royalties and leave his works to the Russian people.

The movie is based on a novel by Jay Parini, so there is also a love story, not that of Leo and Sofya, but that of a would-be Tolstoy acolyte (James McEvoy). McEvoy seems to have made a specialty of playing naive men undergoing learning experiences (that Idi Amin was evil in The Last King of Scotland, that life was unfair in Atonement, that he was a pussy in Wanted, and so on). He functions as the fulcrum between the two camps warring over Tolstoy’s soul (and copyrights), although Sofya is clearly the more sympathetic character. This is thanks in part to Mirren’s beautiful, emotional performance, but also because director Michael Hoffman pushes our sympathies that way. She may be a mercenary, but at least, he seems to say, she’s not a stick in the mud like Chertkov. As for Tolstoy himself (Christopher Plummer), he’s a kindly supporting character in his own drama.

IMDB link

viewed 3/3/10 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 3/?/10