User Reviews

'The Last Station' focuses on the last year in the life of  Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist.  Toward the end of his life, Tolstoy began promulgating a secular religious philosophy based on the Christian teachings of 'turning the other cheek' and helping one's fellow man.  He advocated pacifism and urged members of the upper class to attend to the needs of the indigent.  A cult-like group of anarchists, The Tolstoyans, headed by Vladimir Chertkov, insinuated themselves into Tolstoy's life and set up a commune of followers near Tolstoy's country estate.  

The plot of 'The Last Station' is relatively simple.  Chertkov hires a young pacifist, Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy) to work as Tolstoy's secretary but in reality act as his spy.  Valentin is instructed to write down everything the master says and relay all garnered information back to Chertkov.  The Tolstoyans have high and mighty ideals about spreading Tolstoy's message but the leadership are a bunch of prigs, insisting that all members of the commune lead ascetic lives as celibates.  At first Valentin wears his virginity as a badge of honor but soon falls for the free spirited Masha (Kerry Condon), who seduces him. Masha soon grows disillusioned with the 'movement' as she cannot abide by their rigid rules.

Tolstoy appears to be much more open-minded than his followers and laughs at Valentin when he admits that he's a virgin. Nonetheless, it's never really explained in much detail why Tolstoy is attracted to his 'Tolstoyans'. There's some talk about Tolstoy being impressed by Chertkov's ability to get his message out to as many people as possible. By the same token, Tolstoy cannot be unaware that his followers deep down are a bunch of reactionaries.

It's his long-suffering wife, Sofya, who sees through Chertkov and his minions and clashes with her husband about her suspicions that he might be changing his will in favor of his obsessed followers. Her fears are realized when Tolstoy agrees to sign away all his copyrights so that the Russian people can read his books for free. This outrages Sofya, since she was counting on having the family receive the inheritance.

Three quarters of 'The Last Station' is played primarily as a farce. Helen Mirren intentionally serves up an over-the-top performance as Sofya, the overemotional countess, who would probably be diagnosed today as bi-polar. While Sofya correctly sees through Chertkov's machinations, her emotional outbursts end up alienating her husband, who finally has had enough and decides to leave his estate.

The last quarter of the film (the more serious part) chronicles Tolstoy's last days as he ends up the subject of intense media scrutiny. Buoyed by his followers along with his devoted daughter, Tolstoy is given lodging by a kindly stationmaster after disembarking from a train in southern Russia. Meanwhile, Sofya tries to commit suicide by jumping in a pond back at the Tolstoy estate. The suicide attempt fails and she soon learns of Tolstoy's aborted trip and that he's now dying. She races to see her stricken husband but Chertkov and her daughter prevent her from seeing him on his death bed. Finally, as he draws his last breaths, the daughter allows her mother to pay her last respects.

'The Last Station' is most successful in the scenes where Helen Mirren is battling the Tolstoyans. Two scenes come to mind right away: where Sofya falls through the window and rages against Chertkov as they plot to divert the family inheritance; and when Sofya fires a gun multiple times at Chertkov's picture. There's also quite a bit of nice interplay between Plummer and Mirren, as the Tolstoy's love/hate relationship is dissected in high relief.

Paul Giamatti is one of the best American character actors out there today and does a fine job of playing up the comical aspects of the petty tyrant, Chertkov. But Chertkov remains unexplained—does he have any redeeming characteristics or is he a pure villain? (when Giamatti keeps twirling his moustache, we're inclined to believe that he is indeed the principal villain of the piece). James McAvoy doesn't have much to work with in the part of Valentin who's depicted as a Nervous Nellie who eventually (and rather predictably) joins up with Masha and leaves the Tolstoyan cult for good. One thing is for sure: Christopher Plummer can do no wrong as Tolstoy (when is Plummer ever bad in a part?)

'The Last Station' is well written but by no means should it be considered 'high-brow'. The idea that the well-intentioned ideas of a creative man such as Tolstoy could be so easily corrupted by a group of cult-like, anarchistic followers, is never explored seriously. Instead, the film's scenarists are bemused by both Tolstoy's followers and family members and view their machinations more as farce than serious drama. Only in the last scene, where Sofya expresses her undying love for her husband who has just expired, does 'The Last Station' rise to the heights of deep emotion.

'The Last Station' will certainly keep your interest from beginning to end. And please pay attention to the closing credits, where the actual motion pictures of Tolstoy walking around on his country estate, are shown.

As The Last Station begins, Leo (more correctly Lev or Liev) Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) has given up novel-writing for the dissemination of his own personal Tolstoyan ideology based on a literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus. It calls upon the privileged to devote themselves to vegetarianism, pacifism, and helping the poor. Tolstoy's ideas about non-violent resistance were later to have a strong influence on Gandhi and Martin Luther King. At this point communities in Russia have been set up to practice his principles, and we glimpse one, though Tolstoy himself lives at one remove from it on his big estate, eighty-something, long-bearded, still riding horses, writing, and arguing (often affectionately) with his wife. Given to fits of generosity that have long infuriated her, he's now planning to turn over the rights to his literary works (War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and the rest) to the Russian people. This means royalties won't go to his heirs. Sofya (Helen Mirren), his passionate and outspoken wife of 48 years, is vehemently opposed to this, which she sees as an abandonment of the rights and needs of Tolstoy's own family. She was supposed to be the literary executor. Her chief opponent on this issue aside from Tolstoy himself is his arch-supporter and secretary, Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti); Chertkov's vying with Sofya for control of the rights.

And vying is hardly the word; hyperventilating might be more appropriate. Mirren shouts. Plummer growls. Giamatti barks. The Last Station is a heavy-breathing historical weepie. It's a Russo-German production in which everything happens and nothing happens and everybody speaks English. More British than Russian despite its authentic-looking costumes and sets, this is one of those posh Masterpiece Theater-style productions that draws you in but never feels quite convincing. It's a feast of overacting, tumult, and peasant clothing made to order for older members of the middle-class art house audience. It's hard to see who's the greatest drama queen here, though Mirren, who's played a remarkable array of great women in her time including the wife of Caligula, a gangland kingpin's moll and -- in more restrained mode -- a very un-drama queen Queen of England, probably earns the scenery-chewing prize; she lets out all the stops. The yelling, hissing, ranting, and sobbing never stop. Sometimes, as they send out great puffs of black smoke and chug noisily into remote Russian outposts, including Astapovo station where the writer lives his last days, even the antique railway trains seem to be overacting.

As a wide-eyed and innocent new secretary named Valentin sent by Chertkov to spy on the family, the young Scottish actor James McAvoy blushes, grins, tears up, and sneezes -- nervous reactions because he's so happy and awed to be in the presence of the great man; the cutesy-ness of this is cloying. The cast also includes McAvoy's real-life wife Anne-Marie Duff, as Sasha, Tolstoy's daughter. But Valentin isn't involved with Sasha; he connects with a feisty young member of the household at Tolstoy's country estate called Masha (Kerry Condon). Masha agrees with the idealistic ethical principles of the group but thinks everyone's a pompous bore. Tolstoy seems to be against sex, but Valentin breaks the rules with Masha. McAvoy chews up the scenery in his own way. His character's rather saccharine purity contrasts with the overbearing power struggle and ideological posturing, but never really becomes clearly relevant to the main drama. Maybe he's meant to draw in a younger audience for the movie, but the effort is feeble.

Much is made of separations and reunions. Masha leaves the estate, putting Valentin in a quandary. He's too wound up in the Tolstoy family drama to go and join her but it's his loss. Tolstoy is bent on ending his days like a monk and goes off leaving Sofya behind to abandon everything in a remote area, but he never makes it beyond the train station at Astapovo, where he falls ill. Sofya comes, is sent away, comes back. It all ends in a funeral scene full of Russian peasant faces (recruited actually in Germany, where the film was mostly shot), a sequence Eisenstein would have done much better. This story is an example of the irony of the rich and famous posing as simple souls. Tolstoy thinks himself alone in his last days but there are hundreds of journalists and photographers outside and the note-taking every time he opens his mouth never ceases.

Christopher Plummer, who really is 80, is a real acting lion. He's grand in his long gray beard and looks quite like the real Tolstoy. But what he's doing is hamming it up. Giamatti, a good journeyman whose best roles are still the lovable losers he played in American Splendor and Sideways, looks a lot like the real Chertkov and if we're just not meant to like him, he's done enough. Mirren is a great actress, but here she's just shrill. Plummer's and Mirren's foreplay scene in which they cavort in bed and cock-a-doodle-do and giggle is about as embarrassing as discreet art house cinema can get. Working from a recent historical novel by Jay Parini, Michael Hoffman has not exercised sufficient restraint over his cast in this misguided effort. The actors are at their most, but not at their best. And, worse yet, it's never clear what we're supposed to make of these people, and whether Tolstoy's last days were futile, tragic, or just highly publicized.

I am big fan of Tolstoy, I love his persona, I am aware of his family life, of Chertkov and all the people that surround him. The journalist and all those people around are well portrayed in this picture, they were so annoying, but the main characters are... poor. Where is the writer? where is the preacher? where is the Zeus kind of man? I know that the movie tend to show the last days of Tolstoy, the stupidity of Chertkov, but where is Tolstoy?, yes, he is relegated in some way, this movies shares Chertkov's fault, it show us only the Icon with some features that are aiming to move the audience, but they fail absolutely. Tolstoy was a thinker, a great writer, a storyteller, a explosion of life, where is that? This was pure gossip, the gossip of all this journalist, of the doctor, of the musician, of all the people that wrote memories about the last moments of the great writer... But the writer has left us a huge amount of arguments, stories, autobiography, where was that?

Pre-Communist 1917 revolution is the backdrop for this drama which features a totally over-the-top performance by Helen Mirren as the Countess Tolstoy, and Christopher Plummer as the great writer Leo Tolstoy. Both Mirren and Plummer were nominated for Oscars in the best actress and supporting actor divisions, respectively and deservedly lost to Sandra Bullock and Christoph Waltz, respectively.

The movie is a slow moving one with a sidebar story of Tolstoy's social secretary finding love in the commune that the writer has set up.

The film is extremely slow moving and brooding with Paul Giamatti, the friend of Plummer, stealing every scene that he is in. Conniving and supposedly loyal to his friend, he sets forth a changing of the will to supposedly help Tolstoy's cause of peace which sets him against Mirren.

As shown in the film, the peasants didn't look like they had it that bad which is a major flaw of the film. In fact, Mirren seems to be suffering even more. Is she that money hungry, desperate for love or just what?

"All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love."

This quote begins the movie. Most simply, the movie is about love. Tolstoy had many other beliefs and politics in his life but this movie only brushes upon them. "The Last Station" explores the meaning of love for many of it's characters: Sofya for her love for Lev. Chertkov for his love for the movement. Bulgakov for his confusion on where his love should be after entering into Tolstoy's home and commune. Masha for what seems to be the movement but becomes love for Bulgakov by the end of the film. Lev for his love of his teachings and ideals.

Love is forgiving and all encompassing. When love is felt for another human being in this film, it is vividly shown and understood. In my mind, Sofya's cry begging Lev for forgiveness at the end of the movie is what this "love" is about. What the film fails to show is Lev's reciprocation, or need for forgiveness at the end of his life (which historically Lev did want but was not allowed to get).

Lev's love for mankind, for unity, for equality - was that out of love for others? Or, were his social beliefs fighting against the guidelines of religion and government because these were guidelines he did not wish to take upon himself? The obvious effect that Lev's non-Tolstoyan personality has on Bulgakov is clearly shown in the "The Last Station".

An interesting movie for sure, well acted, a good script and beautiful surroundings. The film dances around religion: Sofya praying after Lev leaves, a Priest on the train, people singing a prayer after Lev's death (still sung in churches now), the icons in Lev's room on his deathbed. The Christian Orthodox undertone in the movie is mostly unspoken, but it is there: the love for one another is one of unsurmountable importance.

If Helen wins another Oscar for this, it will be well deserved. Christopher Plummer, James McAvoy, and Ann-Marie Duff all give fine performances. Paul Giamatti shows us a side of him we have not previously seen. Pure villain. A villain fueled by ruthless passion for a noble cause. IMO Michael Hoffman has contributed to the world in an important way by making this movie and releasing it at this time in history. While Tolstoy's thoughts on private property were definitely out of the box and the precursors to the Bolshevik revolution therein equally as radical, these things all touched the nerve of the masses as a result of a society who's financial state was extremely out of balance. This director is finicky about the material he chooses. He could make pictures every year were he willing to jump on the Hollywood band wagon. He chooses his projects wisely. In this case, he wrote the script as well as directed so it's totally deserving of the DGA sanctioned "A Film by (MIchael Hoffman)" credit. And not only does he use his skills to teach. And he does so in a highly entertaining fashion. That is a rare, and much needed pursuit these days. A great little picture, entertaining as hell, and it leaves one thinking about such things in the light of today's global economical downturn.